The X-FilesSeason 10

The episode begins in 1947 at the aftermath of the Roswell crash, creating the flashback frame for the revived mythology. In 2016, Mulder is isolated and brooding until Scully contacts him at Skinner's request. Tad O'Malley, a flamboyant conspiracy-media figure, brings the agents to Sveta, an abductee who claims alien DNA is in her blood.

Mulder is shown a working triangular craft powered by alien energy sources. The discovery causes a radical shift: he starts believing that shadowy human elites have used alien technology harvested from crashed UFOs to plan a long domestic takeover. The final reveal shows the Cigarette Smoking Man alive, hidden in a command center, and still manipulating events.

• The mythology reboot: the major threat is repositioned from extraterrestrial colonization to a cabal of humans weaponizing alien technology against citizens.
• Mulder and Scully are separated: Sveta says Scully diagnosed Mulder with endogenous depression, helping end their romantic relationship.
• The X-Files are reopened: Skinner brings his former agents back to the Bureau.
• Sveta is erased: her car is destroyed from above, apparently by aircraft connected to the conspiracy she exposed.

The episode is saturated with post-9/11 paranoia, post-Snowden distrust, Patriot Act surveillance anxiety, chemtrail theory, and internet-fueled conspiracy media. Tad O'Malley embodies the 2010s culture of fear-driven online punditry.

Reaction was deeply mixed. Viewers welcomed the return of Mulder, Scully, the opening credits, and Mark Snow's theme, but many critics attacked the exposition-heavy monologues and the speed of the mythology rewrite. The season's 64% Rotten Tomatoes critical score partly reflects the weakness of the mythology bookends, with this premiere often named as a central culprit.

“My Struggle” acts as the ignition switch: it reopens the X-Files, defines the emotional baseline, introduces modern conspiracy proxies, and sets up the finale's attempt to pay off the new human-led mythology.

At Nugenics Technology, Dr. Sanjay is overwhelmed by a piercing sound inside his head. In a brutal cold open, he flees to a server room, deletes files, and kills himself with a letter opener through his ear and brain. Before dying, he writes “Founder's Mutation” on his palm.

Mulder and Scully trace the case to Dr. Augustus Goldman, “The Founder,” whose program uses alien DNA and biotechnology to engineer children with extraordinary mutations. The investigation uncovers Kyle, a boy whose telekinetic screaming ability triggers the sonic frequency, and Molly, his sister. The episode ends with Kyle apparently using his powers to make Goldman's eyes burst.

• Alien DNA in children: Goldman's experiments echo the Syndicate's hybridization programs and tie the standalone case back to the mythology.
• William's shadow: Mulder and Scully each imagine a life with William, but both warm domestic fantasies curdle into fear of alien abilities.
• Old conspiracy, new laboratory: the episode creates continuity between the original alien-human hybrid story and the revival's biotech concerns.

The case is about institutional power, parental complicity, and adults using authority over children's bodies to harm rather than protect. The Nugenics facility becomes a clinical nightmare, while William becomes the emotional wound beneath the procedural investigation.

The episode was widely considered the revival's first true return to form. Critics praised James Wong's atmospheric direction, the classic structure, the intense gore, and the William fantasy sequences. The main criticism was that the mutant children themselves could have used more development.

Originally planned later in the season, “Founder's Mutation” becomes the early anchor for William as a through-line, bridging nostalgia, alien-DNA mythology, and Mulder and Scully's parental grief.

In Shawan, Oregon, two familiar stoners witness a lizard-man creature near a murder scene. Mulder, suffering a crisis of faith in the internet age, is dragged into the case by Scully. The investigation eventually reveals that Guy Mann is not a human who turns into a monster; he is a reptile bitten by a human, cursed to transform into a man.

Humanity horrifies Guy: he suddenly wants coffee, a job, property, lies, and a dog. The true murderer is Pasha, an animal-control officer. Mulder's conversation with Guy in a graveyard restores his sense of wonder, and Guy chooses to hibernate for thousands of years.

• The stoners return from “War of the Coprophages” and “Quagmire.”
• Guy Mann's green suit evokes Carl Kolchak from Kolchak: The Night Stalker, an inspiration for The X-Files.
• Mulder leans against Kim Manners' gravestone, a direct tribute to the late director.
• The motel paintings nod to Darin Morgan's “Humbug.”
• Mulder's pencil-throwing references the original office ritual, and Scully's immortality joke continues the “Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose” gag.

This is the season's most sophisticated meditation on belief, purpose, consciousness, aging, identity, and the horror of becoming ordinary. Guy's unwanted humanity turns everyday life into cosmic body horror: labor, consumption, mortality, self-invention, and lies.

The episode was celebrated almost universally. Its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and 9.5/10 average mark it as the critical peak of Season 10, while Rhys Darby's performance made Guy Mann one of the revival's signature one-episode characters.

Structurally, it restores Mulder's faith and the audience's confidence. It proves the show can still be extraordinary when absurdity, character, and the unexplained are treated as sources of wonder rather than mechanical plot devices.

In West Philadelphia, a housing official is brutally dismembered. Mulder and Scully find strange street art involving a figure with a bandage across its nose, and a Band-Aid at the scene contains no organic material. While Mulder investigates, Scully receives word that her mother Margaret has suffered a massive heart attack.

At the hospital, Scully discovers her mother has changed her living will. Margaret briefly wakes, holds Mulder's hand, and says, “My son is named William, too,” before dying. The statement devastates Scully because it points not only to her brother but to her son William, whom she gave up for adoption.

The case leads Mulder to Trashman, a street artist who says the Band-Aid Nose Man is a thought-form, or tulpa, created to protect homeless people displaced by development. The creature cannot truly be defeated; Trashman modifies the image, and the killings stop without conventional closure.

“Home Again” operates through parallel responsibility stories. The monster punishes officials who treat homeless people as logistical problems, while Scully confronts guilt over giving up William to protect him. Glen Morgan links social abandonment to personal abandonment without making either thread simple.

The hospital material draws on Glen Morgan's own bereavement and gives the revival one of its most authentic Mulder/Scully moments: Mulder comes to Scully's side, says little, and lets presence become the language of care.

Response was divided but passionate. Critics praised the Band-Aid Nose Man as frightening and visually memorable and singled out Gillian Anderson's hospital performance as the finest acting of the season. Some reviewers felt the monster case and family tragedy needed more space to breathe, yet the Margaret Scully death scene became one of the revival's most discussed moments.

This episode deepens the emotional core beyond the mythology mechanics. It makes William's absence concrete, connects the revival back to the Scully family history, and projects forward to the William storyline that dominates the next season.

Two young Muslim men detonate a bomb inside a Texas art gallery. One bomber, Shiraz, survives in a coma. Agents Miller and Einstein — youthful analogues for Mulder and Scully — seek help from the X-Files office. Miller wants to communicate with Shiraz to prevent a larger attack; Einstein is skeptical.

Mulder proposes psilocybin mushrooms to achieve psychic contact, but Einstein secretly gives him a placebo. Mulder's “trip” includes line dancing, the Lone Gunmen, the Cigarette Smoking Man, and Shiraz. Despite the placebo, Mulder hears “Babel al-funduq,” the Babylon Hotel, allowing agents to stop another terrorist cell.

“Babylon” tries to wrestle with terrorism, radical faith, language, translation, divine communication, and apocalyptic sound. The Tower of Babel metaphor is explicit. The episode asks what voice a person hears before committing violence, and whether supernatural contact can exist beyond science and doctrine.

The episode is widely treated as the revival's low point. Major criticisms include shallow treatment of Muslim characters, the jarring mushroom-dance sequence, and the sense that Miller and Einstein consume precious screen time in an already short season. Some viewers defend the surreal ambition and the final Mulder/Scully hand-holding scene, but the consensus remains strongly negative.

“Babylon” introduces Miller and Einstein for possible future use, establishes the celestial trumpet thread, and gives Mulder and Scully one of the season's more overt spiritual conversations. Its final hand-holding moment suggests emotional movement even inside a heavily criticized hour.

Scully narrates the cold open, mirroring Mulder's narration in the premiere. Tad O'Malley returns and claims alien DNA has been found in every American citizen. The Cigarette Smoking Man's conspiracy has built a Spartan Virus into the human genome as a mass-extermination mechanism.

Mulder is missing and later found dying after confronting the Cigarette Smoking Man. Scully works with Einstein to use her alien DNA to synthesize a cure. The final discovery is devastating: William's stem cells are the only material capable of manufacturing the vaccine.

Scully and Miller race along a highway crowded with sick, panicked people. Scully reaches Mulder, tells him William's stem cells are the only cure, and a UFO descends above the road in blinding light. The season cuts to black.

• The Spartan Virus: the conspiracy's endgame is a biological extinction event activated through humanity's genetic code.
• Monica Reyes returns: she is now working with the Cigarette Smoking Man after making a survival bargain, with little explanation and no John Doggett mention.
• William as salvation: Mulder and Scully's son becomes humanity's biological hope.
• The UFO cliffhanger: the season ends without resolving the highway encounter.

The finale channels pandemic fear, government population control, weaponized healthcare, biological surveillance, and the ultimate nightmare of institutional betrayal: the state has built destruction into citizens' own DNA. It also transforms William from absent child into species-level cure.

Critical reaction was harsh. Many reviewers attacked the impenetrable plotting, the lack of meaningful Mulder/Scully interaction, and the unresolved cliffhanger. Defenders argued for its apocalyptic ambition and formal mirroring of the premiere, but the dominant response was frustration.

“My Struggle II” makes Season 10 inseparable from Season 11. The Spartan Virus, William's stem cells, the UFO, and Monica Reyes' allegiance become unresolved handoffs rather than a closed chapter.