X-Files Creator Chris Carter on That Cliffhanger Ending, a Lingering Mulder Mystery and the Latest on Season 11
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The X-Files revival finale.
Just like you, we watched the final moments of The X-Files‘ revival finale Monday night with our jaws on the floor (and our hands tingling with the urge to strangle Monica Reyes).
Unlike you, we got to talk to series creator Chris Carter immediately after the episode aired. And because we are much more benevolent overlords than Cigarette Smoking Man, we’re happy to bring you the highlights of the conversation.
But first, just on the off-chance that hypnoregression therapy is messing with your memory/making you think you’re a Civil War soldier, a quick recap: When masses of people began getting sick with a variety of illnesses, Scully realized that the elusive men in power were trying to kill everyone via a “Spartan virus.” (There’s a lot more to explain there, but you want to get to the good stuff, right?)
Eventually, Scully realized that her unique (read: messed-with) genetic blueprint was what was keeping her from getting sick, so she synthesized a vaccine from her DNA and started healing everyone. Meanwhile, Mulder — who’d tracked down Cigarette Smoking Man (who, we learned, was employing the former Agent Reyes as his right-hand woman) — refused to accept the baddie’s offer of salvation and was in very bad shape by the time Scully brought the antidote to him.
She theorized that he’d need an infusion of William’s stem cells in order to live… then a UFO appeared above them and shone its bright light right on Dr. Scully, who stared up in horror as the episode came to a cliffhanger close.
Read on to hear what Carter had to say about a Season 11, William’s whereabouts and why Mulder (an abductee himself) wasn’t immune to the virus.
TVLINE | Let’s say the planets don’t align and there are no movies and no more seasons — are you OK with ending the series on that note?
I can tell you this: Fox owns this show. I can’t imagine, with the ratings that we’ve got and the way we ended this season, that there won’t be more X-Files. They will find a way to get that done. Because I spoke about it briefly with [Fox CEO] Dana Walden today, so there’s an appetite there and… a chance certainly to find how we’re gonna get ourselves off this precipice.
TVLINE | We had that shot of Alien Scully at the end of the cold open, which Fox released weeks ago. Was that just to mess with us?
[Laughs] Well, if Scully believes that she has alien DNA, this is something that’s going on in her subconscious. She’s possibly as alien as she is human, and that was playing with that idea.
TVLINE | Between the first episode of the revival and the finale, Scully and Mulder feel as though they’re growing back together — maybe not romantically, but they seem to want to be in each other’s company again.
Yes. There’s tension there, because they love each other and have, I think, since the first season — maybe even from the moment they first met. There’s a tremendous amount of love and respect there. That is what still exists, even if they’re not back together, I think you saw through our six episodes a warming, a thawing of whatever cold places they’d both found themselves in. And when they are arm in arm, or hand in hand, walking in front of Mulder’s house there [in Episode 5, “Babylon”], I think that’s a moment, for me, of a thawing of the situation.
TVLINE | William was referenced in a bunch of the episodes, then again right before the cliffhanger. In your mind, do you know where he is and what he’s up to?
[Laughs] I can’t tell you.
TVLINE | Of course you can’t! But do you know?
Well, if anyone knows, it’s me.
TVLINE | Do you have a favorite scene or moment from the last six episodes?
I love the scene in the graveyard between Mulder and Guy Mann [in Episode 3, “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster”]. I just love it. Actually, lines come back to me when I’m just sitting and thinking about something, just Rhys Darby’s delivery of certain lines, I just love.
TVLINE | He was great casting in that episode.
Yes, and it’s funny: It was something we had to fight for. He wasn’t the network’s first choice. So I feel vindicated. I love Jim Wong’s directing in Episode 2. I love the Scully scenes, dealing with the death of her mother in Episode 4. I like Mulder’s wild ride, his placebo-mushroom trip in Episode 5 — but I also love that scene, the pietá on the boat, a vision of light in Hell. And Episode 1 engendered wildly different reactions, and I guess I loved that fact. And I love the cutting-edge science in Episode 6.
TVLINE | Scully takes on a very Mulderesque tone in this episode, and it occurs to me that we saw Mulder act very Scully-like in the episode where Maggie dies: being very supportive, just being there. Was mixing it up that way one of the goals of the revival for you?
We’ve done this before, this role-reversal, to really great effect. [Writers Glen] Morgan and [James] Wong did it so beautifully in the first and second season… But I think Scully’s seen too much now for her to always maintain her perfect bias and skepticism. They are prone to finishing each other’s sentences at this point.
TVLINE | Were there any fan nods you couldn’t get into the revival, like Mulder’s Knicks tee shirt in Episode 3?
It’s funny: I think we put everything I could think of in there. But there are always things you want to do and are unable to. There is something, but I can’t remember what it is. I was lucky to put the Lone Gunmen back in. We had to bring one of the actors all the way from Australia to do it. So that’s a case of actually getting what you want.
TVLINE | If there are more episodes, can I get a definitive answer on whether Scully will get a desk or not?
[Laughs] I don’t know — there is another little room there, so she might find herself in that cubbyhole-sized room with her own desk. Who knows? Maybe she will supplant Mulder now that Mulder is in such bad shape.
TVLINE | Speaking of… Mulder was also abducted at one point: Why is he not protected from the Spartan virus?
That’s a good question. And one that needs to be answered.
THERE HAD BETTER BE MORE EPISODES, FOX! I still need my Scully and Mulder reunion.
Fox owns X-Files and should never let Chris Carter near it again.
I hate to say it, but I agree. There’s life left in the series, but it needs better writing at the very least. Of course, as an XFiles fan, I will continue to watch.
It’s the same thing with Star Trek and Star Wars. After awhile the fathers need to leave the franchise to new people.
Lol this argument would hold more weight if the new star wars powers that be had made a better, original film.
Anyways, Chris carter didn’t bring his A game, and it showed. Maybe he needs to recruit Vince Gilligan back fulltime
TPTB recreated A New Hope for a new generation with the latest movie. It wasn’t the greatest thing but it needed to be done after just how awful the prequels were.
Vince and Darin Morgan
Seriously just shut up and go away then.
LOL sorry Mrs. Carter, but your Husband RUINED M/S and RUINED the mytharc….not to mention he is a HORRIBLE writer dialogue wise….my daugters can write better dialogue.
Completely agree. The Chris Carter penned episodes were sooo bad. I’m almost tempted to give up. Fox please hand this to someone who can still write interesting television!
Agree. Cut the cord. Let someone else write if there is another. Don’t Lucas it.
The Truth is right here!!
So you honestly think Chris Carter has let you down with this series?
He’s been letting fans down since, ohhh, maybe season 4? Earlier? This show was great despite him, not because of him.
I think season 3 and four are fantastic. For me the mythology goes off the rails season eight, but especially season 9. But even that is acceptable to me. This mythology ignores the rest of it.
Stand alones are still good. I still want it back. As someone mentioned, Vince Gillian needs to come back and save CC.
Bless you Donna. I’ve been saying that for SOOO long. :) I refused to watch this revival and now that I’m reading about how it ended, I’m certainly glad I avoided it and the movies as well.
Watch the middle episodes; they’re so clever and funny, it’s a shame to miss them. The last episode is Absolutely Terrible. Worse X-Files episode EVER, and there were some stinkers.
Yes; for reasons stated in my own comment.
Chris Carter is a perfectly capable writer. Glen Morgan and James Wong’s episodes weren’t any better. The only problem here is FOX not giving them the budget or time to match his vision. If they had a more relaxed schedule and enough money to go out on location more, the show would work much better.
Chris had TEN EFFING YEARS to get this right…my God you people will make every excuse in the book for CC’s shortcomings….there is a REASON his only other new attempt “The After” was DESTROYED and canned after ONE episode…..CC blows.
Was not expecting a. Cliffhanger, but I absolutely loved all six episodes.
.
I believe there. Is more truth out there.
I am completely obsessed with this show…AGAIN! I loved the original show and still watch the old ones whenever they are on. I do hope they come back for a full season of shows!
I’m glad the show is back and there has been a lot of great stuff. But how anyone’s first question to Chris Carter is not about the contradiction the new mythology creates and what it does to the first six seasons is beyond me. Do we ignore all the syndicate scenes? I can’t be the only one bothered by this.
I’m plenty bothered, too, Jake. I still try to fit the new conspiracy with the old. And I haven’t forgotten black oil and bees and super soldiers and a UFO in Antarctica!!!
I totally agree, Jake! I greatly enjoyed the new episodes and am very happy the show is back, but you’re right, he’s completely contradicted the entire nine previous seasons (more than just the first six, really).
Thank you! Like I said, in my comment, I feel like I am left with even more questions after this season than when the series originally ended. And I don’t want to wait 20 more years to find out the answers either!
Well I thought about that as well and and if you look at Scully’s narration it shows a pic of Well Manicured Man when she talks about the syndicate, so I had assumed since CSM was still alive that there were still leftover members of the syndicate that didn’t get killed off, as well as new members brought in to the conspiracy.,
Yeah, I saw WMM and realize they’re saying the Syndicate was always behind things. That part fits. But why was WMM killed? (just as one example) If everything he revealed to M was a lie? (that the whole Purity colonization plot was all lies) What about all the times we (as viewers) saw the Black Oil taking over life forms, like the Neanderthals in FTF?
If you go back and watch episodes like Paper Clip, 731 and Redux II, it actually all fits in remarkably well. But never assume each new twist in the mythology is The Whole Truth. Everybody lies, especially CSM!
The virus part could probably be made to fit, but so much of the Purity colonization and Alien Bounty Hunters (not to mention the whole Faceless Alien Rebels stories), as well as the Alien Replicants (called Supersoldiers) stuff doesn’t fit. Why didn’t the alien shot in “My Struggle” have black blood? The sad truth is that CC just makes stuff up as he goes along, and doesn’t really strive for continuity. There’s a reason TV Tropes has an entire phenomena known as The Chris Carter Effect (look it up!). And I say this as one of the world’s most hardcore Philes! I’m hoping that a lot of it will actually be revealed to be lies, because prior to S10 it all fit remarkably well (well, all but “The Unnatural”, which is a brilliant episode, but I view that one as a case of an unreliable narrator, as it otherwise contradicts the Mythogy). There’s dozens of hours of past episodes that don’t fit with this “new twist” at all, and will totally contradict it.
I absolutely LOVED everything. But I need to rant here. WHAT THE HECK DID YOU DO WITH AGENT REYES? SHE WOULD NEVER WORK WITH THE CSM!!! NEVER!!! Butchered her character alright :(
I know right? I was hoping that they would say she was working undercover or something but they didn’t and that did not seem her character at all, maybe that will be addressed in the next season or movie
Completely agree. I loved Annabeth Gish as Reyes on the show, she had real integrity so there is no way she would side with CSM unless there is more to it than just being on the survive list.
She spent 10 years or so with CSM and manage to gather the Intel to let Scully developed a cure.
I wouldn’t be surprise if it was reveal that Reyes was working undercover the whole time inside CSM organisation, with Skinner aiding her.
I’m confused. Didn’t Mulder have alien DNA and that’s why he was abducted in Requiem?
True, but I’m assuming it has something to do with the fact that when he was returned and completely healed, he went back to normal pre-abduction human.
YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO ASSUME. This is the problem with Chris Carter and his ridiculous “mythology” in a nutshell. It’s all over the place, it NEVER made any logical sense, and then he leaves a GIANT plot point like this one just hanging there. It’s insulting.
That’s what I think, too. That the fact that Mulder doesn’t seem to have alien DNA has something to do with the intent to make him a “super soldier” and that he was cured. Or maybe he does have it and it was made inactive.
As far as CC goes, I think the revival was great as a whole, and I much preferred the finale over the premiere. The premiere was hard to follow and very slow going, this one felt much faster paced (in comparison). However, if CC stuck to series showrunners, it would be fine with me. I’d rather stick with old showrunners, new ones seem to fail more often than not.
The X Files always has been, and always will be, one of the most ingenious, fresh creations ever to grace the tv landscape. Please….. We must have more … I was practically on the ceiling during tonight’s cliff hanger!
William is in that spacecraft, friends. My alien DNA can feel it.
Farts in your face Chris Carter, no one wants a spinoff! Finish your story instead of stringing people along and then going “well fox owns the show so maybe they’ll finish it”…lazy!!!!
More X-Files episodes?…. The “truth” please….they must be “out there”!
This was one of my favorite shows when it was on before, and it’s still a great show! HEY FOX (the station, not Mulder) BRING THIS SHOW BACK PERMANENTLY! I loved every episode!
Carter is being awful coy with some of his responses.
I’m thinking that there will definitely be more. They wouldn’t have ended it the way they did if that was it forever.
I would be happy with another 6 episodes.
I agree…for that to be the definitive finale…seems improbable. I have a feeling there will be more, and I think Hulu or Netflix will buy it from FOX. Simply for the fact that there doesn’t seem to be strong support from FOX. They might just sell the commodity, and it would do better in that arena.
I’m pretty sure The X-Files is FOX’s second highest rated show this season by far (only behind Empire). I’m sure they have reasons to want it back
I beg for a eleven seaon but please NO MORE AGENT EINSTEIN AND MILLER THEY ARE CHEAP COPY OF MULDER AND SCULLY
I believe that’s rather the point.
They probably saved placenta stem cells from Willam’s birth so they won’t need to find William to save Mulder.
Having seen all the episodes my main critical takeaway is, I wish the science was a little better. I can do were-human-monster working at cell phone stores because that is how it works, doesn’t have to be nit picky accurate, just seem more current, I feel the way the vaccine/antidote was made could have been handled better, I mean it jumps from electrogel to kind of large scale production over the course of an hour, I get that there are time limitation and that this is the finale, hmmm, I just feel there is a more savvy way to handle it.
PS: It was nice to watch some new x-files on the same local station I used to watch them on. It was a nice surprise that I was going to get to watch some NEW episodes, I haven’t been hanging with my TV/Movie savvy friends so I hadn’t heard that it was coming back till about 9 days before the first episode. WUUU! X-Files! I will watch any further episodes or movies happily at this point.
Good interview! I feel better about that last episode now.
So. Very. Disappointed; not only was there just 5 seconds of Mulder/Scully interaction, plus a cliffhanger. Fans deserve better. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Is it possible Robbie Amell’s character is actually William? Or is he too old? Yeah. He’s too old.
Hey, alien fast aging. Maybe Einstein is Scully’s thought-to-be-deceased daughter from her abduction.
How can the smoking man talk when he has a tracheotomy?
Yes, this!! That drove me crazy…among so many other things.
. He would be able to talk, but his voice wouldn’t have sounded exactly the same as it did before.
Carter is a poser. He got lucky with The X-Files and while the revival was decend, you can see from everything he says that he has no idea what he does or where he is going.
And that’s why the x-files ended the way it dis
Chris Carter is stuck in the nineties, in every sense. That flat didactic writing with corny, on the nose dialogs feels extremely outdated after we had Sopranos, House, Breaking Bad and other quality shows. The mythology also pales in comparison to what the world has to deal right now in reality. The technological aspect of the show feels like it was handled by a 5 year old. I haven’t laughed that hard at the mighty FBI laptop with a phone finding URL since Jeff Goldblum’s Levinson infected the alien mothership with a virus.
The best part of the revival for me was watching Mulder and Scully doing a scene together. On mute.
Of course, Fox is doing more “X-Files.”
I love X-Files, I want there to be more seasons (and oh dear GOD please not a spinoff with wannabe Mulder and Scully as the leads), but I have to agree with the comments about the writing for these episodes. Some worked really well, and felt like genuine X-Files episodes, and some felt like I was watching a bunch of actors doing a read through, not really feeling the lines. Hopefully if there is a season 11 (and there BETTER be after that cliffhanger), the writing staff will either get their crap together, or better writing staff will be hired. I think Chris Carter needs to take a backseat writing wise, maybe just be the guy that proofs the scripts as opposed to actually writing them, because his A game was most definitely not in this season.
There should be some insertion of Ancient Aliens theory. As cancer man is trying to reduce population? the Great flood? black pledge? are all past reductions. ha ha. fresh thinking.