The X-Files ‘My Struggle’ Recap

The X-Files has finally returned to TV with the season 10 premiere ‘My Struggle’. The series is my all-time favorite television show. I can still remember watching the Pilot in September 1993. Back then Star Trek: The Next Generation was just beginning its final season and as good as Deep Space Nine was going to be, The X-Files was a promising new series. After nine seasons on the air it became an all-time classic of television and one of the defining series of the 90s.

Now it’s back.

After the last movie was basically a standalone episode, it was awesome to get a return to the Mythology with “My Struggle” although not all of the questions have been answered yet.

Where the Mythology left off, Mulder found out The Truth that Colonization was scheduled to begin with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 and when he confronted the Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM), the series’ villain was seemingly killed in a huge explosion.

Obviously the world is still here so Colonization didn’t happen, so that’s one big question. It’s somewhat answered in the second half of the episode that begins with an online conspiracy nut (modeled after Alex Jones) recruiting Mulder and Scully back into the game. He uses an abductee to help prove his case and even takes Mulder to see an ARV (Alien Replica Vehicle). That scene was by far my favorite in the episode as it saw Mulder come back to life when he saw and touched the craft.

Mulder has a new contact along the lines of Deep Throat and X who is an elderly man who was a doctor at the Roswell crash in 1947. Dialog between them reveals that Mulder first met him sometime after the events of the second movie back in 2008. Mulder starts to piece together that there really isn’t an alien conspiracy and this contact tells him that he’s close to the truth and only missing a final piece.

When Mulder realizes the conspiracy (the show’s Mythology) doesn’t involve an alien end-game like the series was laying out fourteen years ago, we learn that 2012 is when the evil government would begin its plan. So the 2012 date that Mulder sees in “The Truth” remains the truth, only its meaning has now been retconned with the series returning fourteen years later.

The episode ends with lots of death and destruction proving this government conspiracy isn’t one to mess with. Scully learns that she does have alien DNA, and the Cigarette Smoking Man reappears. He’s a alive and announces that they’ve re-opened the X-Files.

Mulder and Scully are back!