11x10 My Struggle IV
The one where... Mulder tracks down William and they have a final confrontation with CSM.
Tagline: Salvator Mundi
Best: Well, when I watched it when it first aired I wasn’t devastated by it the way I was by MSIII because my expectations were so low by this point, so that’s a plus?
Worst: Guys it’s so, so, so, so bad 😂 I can’t even pick out the worst part. I think GA’s reaction kind of sums it up, and I fully support her decision to never make more of CC’s X-Files.
This ending only highlights the hollowness at the core of the mytharc storyline. As the show went on the mytharc became less about discovering the truth and exposing a global conspiracy, and more about torturing our protagonists. And it’s all for nothing. Mulder and Scully never save the world, or prevent an alien invasion, or bring down the conspiracy, or even expose it to the world (Tad O’Malley ranting aside). They just suffer until neither they nor we as the audience can take it anymore.
In the final scene of The Truth, the original series finale, Scully tells Mulder that they only fail if they give up. They’re together, and they believe in the same thing, and that’s where the hope is. It’s small and personal, but it feels bigger.
Here I can’t shake the feeling that the show ends with their failure - to save their son (they even give up at being his parents, they forsake him so easily at the end), to save their old allies Reyes and Skinner, to stop the alien virus pandemic, to find the truth. And maybe the pregnancy was meant as a little ray of hope in this terrible ending, but to me it’s completely tone-deaf. Their relationship is the heart of the show and there isn’t even anything meaningful exchanged between them in the end. I just feel numb.
✔️ Flashlights
❌ Woods/Desert
❌ Slideshow
❌ Autopsy
❌ Evidence Disappears
✔️ Scully Misses It
❌ Mulder Ditch
❌ Sunflower Seeds
✔️ Voiceover: Jackson/William intro VO
❌ Catch Phrase
❌ Scully is a Medical Doctor
❌ Mulder is Spooky
✔️ Scuuullllaaaaayy! Muullllderrrr! Wiiillliiaaaaaam!!!
❌ Fox/Dana
✔️ Inappropriate Touching (that I am here for)
✔️ Casual Scully
✔️ Casual Mulder
❌ Trench Coats
❌ Bad Tie Watch
❌ Glasses Watch
✔️ Taking! It! Personally!: Scully & Mulder
50 States: Tennessee x6, Virginia x23 & DC x110 (45/50)
Investigate: Apart
Solve Rate: 75%
❌ Bechdel Test: Only conversation between women was about William
MSR: 🐝🐝
Goriness: 👽👽👽👽👽
Creepiness: 👽👽👽
Humor: 👽
Rewatch Thoughts:
William check-in: William: …and then I just kinda became a criminal… Getting Jackson/William’s whole backstory in an intro monologue is… bad storytelling. I think he could have been an interesting, flawed but sympathetic character and I hate that this is the direction CC went with him - I want to love Mulder and Scully’s son!
Break-up check-in: Well, they end up in each other’s arms, and that’s the best thing I can say.
I really dislike the way the story is told bouncing around in time. It’s so choppy and disjointed 😫 Maybe to hide how little it makes sense…
So Reyes is trying to help them? It just seems like too little too late. Also it was in Scully’s vision that they met last season, we don’t even know if they’ve actually been in contact in this timeline.
In the original series finale Mulder was put on trial for the murder of a man that he supposedly killed while breaking into a government facility - something that based on 9 seasons we know he wouldn’t do. And here he just flat out shoots and kills at least 5 security guards that we see and whoever that old guy in the office was as… payback? This just isn’t my Mulder.
Once again splitting Mulder and Scully up for the last episode of the series 🙃
Oh goody more driving!
More time trickiness, showing us things like they’re happening concurrently when they’re not 🙄
Mulder getting to put his arms around his son for the first time in 17 years 🥺
I do kind of enjoy William dispatching this new conspiracy group like it’s absolutely nothing - the show has not made me fear them, or interested in them, they’re just annoying
The show apparently cares so little about Scully that we don’t even get to see Skinner tell her about CSM’s claims, or get to see her process what that might mean about her son, about what was done to her 🙃
Oh goody more running around in dark industrial sites - admittedly not something new to the show, but always my least favorite episode climax
Wiiillliiaaaaaam!!!
Reyes is unceremoniously dispatched.
Followed I guess by Skinner, although maybe he could have survived under the car?
I… how are we supposed to feel about any of this?
Even Mulder killing CSM, which should feel cathartic after everything, just feels 🤷🏻♀️ - I mean we saw his face blow up and he came back after that, so I have no faith CC wouldn’t bring him back again given the slightest opportunity!
And… in classic X-Files tradition Scully arrives after everything’s over.
I will just note once again that CSM says: That I am the one who made him? That I am William’s creator? Which supports my belief that William is absolutely still Mulder’s son.
Not that Scully gets the space to think that through after hearing CSM’s claims second hand from Skinner: William was an experiment… I carried him, and I bore him. But I was never a mother to him… WTF. I mean WHAT THE FUCK. She raised him for months. She carried him in her heart for 17 years. I guess you could put this down to shock, but I put the blame on bad writing.
Mulder: What am I now if I’m not a father… This might mean a little more if the show had actually explored what being a father meant to him a little more!
And then the pregnancy reveal. I can’t even explain to you how much I hate this. The dismissal of William as their child because now they have a chance for a real child they can raise together. The pregnancy of a 54 year old woman - even putting aside her infertility. That they only slept together in Plus One to set up this reveal. The idea that a future between them has to involve raising a child, like that’s the only way they can be a family, can be together. That a baby will solve their problems. That Scully’s only purpose on this show is to bear children for the Mulder family. Fucking hell.
We never even learned anything concrete about what William’s relationship was to the alien virus pandemic - did he stop it by killing off CSM and those other conspirators? The tagline was Salvator Mundi aka Savior of the World. But I guess we don’t even know if it’s still happening or not 🤷🏻♀️
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