Chris Carter had a problem. It was 2002. After nine seasons of black oil, bees, flashlights, and sexual tension that could melt a glacier, The X-Files was finally taking a bow. Or so we thought. Looking back at X Files The End—the two-part series finale technically titled "The Truth"—it’s clear that the episode wasn’t just a TV show ending. It was a messy, legalistic, heartbreaking, and deeply frustrating attempt to summarize a decade of paranoia.
Fans were livid. Some cried. Others threw their remote controls.
The episode basically functioned as a giant clip show disguised as a courtroom drama. Fox Mulder was on trial for his life, and the witnesses were a "who’s who" of the show's massive mythology. But let’s be honest: trying to explain the Syndicate, the Super Soldiers, and the alien colonization timeline in 90 minutes is like trying to explain the entirety of the internet to someone from the 1800s using only hand signals. It was a lot.
What Really Happened in the Original Finale
The setup for X Files The End was inherently strange. David Duchovny had been mostly absent from the show's later years, leaving Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish to carry the torch as Doggett and Reyes. But for the finale, the King had to return. Mulder breaks into a top-secret facility (Mount Weather), kills an "indestructible" Super Soldier named Rohrer, and gets hauled before a military tribunal.
It felt claustrophobic. Instead of a grand adventure across the American desert, we got a courtroom.
Skinner acted as the defense attorney. It was a weird choice, honestly. Watching Mitch Pileggi argue legal points felt a bit stiff compared to him normally beating up bad guys or staring down the Smoking Man. One by one, we saw the ghosts of the past. Literally. Dead characters like Alex Krycek and X appeared as hallucinations or spectral witnesses to guide Mulder. It was a heavy-handed way of saying "hey, remember the good old days?" but for a fan who had invested 200+ hours into the series, it was somewhat cathartic to see Nicholas Lea back on screen, even if he was just a ghost in a suit.
The Problem With "The Truth"
The biggest gripe most people have with the way things wrapped up in X Files The End is that it didn't actually resolve the colonization plot. We were told the date: December 22, 2012. That was the day the aliens were supposed to take over. Mulder and Scully ended the episode in a cheap motel room in Roswell, holding each other, hoping for a future that seemed impossible.
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"Maybe the individual is triumphant," Mulder said. It’s a beautiful sentiment. It’s also a massive "we don't know how to finish this" flag from the writers.
You see, the show suffered from its own success. Chris Carter always wanted to do movies. He treated "The Truth" not as a door closing, but as a bridge to a film franchise. Because of that, the stakes felt strangely hollow. If the world is ending in 2012, why are we sitting in a tent in the desert looking at a dying Cigarette Smoking Man? Speaking of him, seeing William B. Davis with long, stringy hair, hiding in a cave like a nicotine-addicted Gollum, was one of the most jarring visuals in the history of the show.
Why the Military Tribunal Failed the Narrative
Courtroom dramas rely on evidence. The X-Files relies on belief.
Putting Mulder on trial was a meta-commentary on the audience's skepticism. The prosecution mocked his "little green men" theories, and the defense tried to prove that the government really was hiding the worst secret in human history. The issue? We already knew the secret. We had seen it. Spending forty minutes of the finale recapping the black oil and the Purity virus felt like a waste of precious screen time. We wanted action. We wanted closure. We got a PowerPoint presentation delivered by ghosts.
The 2016 and 2018 Revivals: Making Things Complicated
If you think X Files The End was confusing in 2002, the revival seasons (10 and 11) basically took a sledgehammer to whatever closure we had left. It turns out the 2012 colonization... just didn't happen? Or it was a "false flag"?
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The "My Struggle" arc in the later seasons suggested that the alien threat was actually a human conspiracy using alien tech to thin the herd. This retconned the entire point of the original finale. It’s a polarizing pivot. Some fans loved the modern take on "fake news" and "post-truth" politics, while others felt it betrayed the core DNA of the show. If the aliens weren't coming, then what was Mulder running from in the desert back in 2002?
Honestly, the ending of Season 11, where Scully reveals she’s pregnant (again) and William’s storyline is "resolved" by him getting shot and falling into water, felt even more rushed than the original 2002 ending. It makes the original X Files The End look like a masterpiece of planning by comparison.
The Emotional Core: Mulder and Scully
Despite the convoluted plot about "Super Soldiers" who could be killed by magnetite (a weakness that felt a bit too "Wizard of Oz" for a gritty sci-fi), the finale succeeded in one area: the relationship.
Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny have a chemistry that is impossible to replicate. When they are in that motel room at the end, the world outside doesn't matter. The alien invasion doesn't matter. The fact that they are outlaws doesn't matter.
That’s the secret of the show. It was never actually about the aliens. It was about two people who only had each other because they were the only ones who knew the terrifying truth. When Scully says, "We believe in you," she isn't just talking about the conspiracy. She’s talking about Mulder's soul. That’s why people still talk about X Files The End decades later. We weren't looking for a scientific explanation of the black oil; we were looking for these two broken people to find some peace.
Actionable Insights for Your Next Rewatch
If you are planning to revisit the series or dive into the finale for the first time, don't go in expecting a neat bow. You won't get one. Instead, look at the finale as a celebration of the journey.
- Watch the "recap" witnesses closely. Each witness in the trial represents a different era of the show’s philosophy. Spender, Marita Covarrubias, and Gibson Praise aren't just characters; they are the milestones of Mulder's failure and success.
- Ignore the 2012 date. Since we are well past 2012 now, the looming "apocalypse" feels a bit like a Y2K bug. Focus on the character growth instead of the calendar.
- Pay attention to the music. Mark Snow’s score in "The Truth" is some of his best work. It’s haunting, melancholic, and brings a weight to the dialogue that the script sometimes lacks.
- Contextualize the "Super Soldiers." Remember that the show was airing post-9/11. The shift from "shadowy government guys in suits" to "unbeatable bio-mechanical soldiers" reflected the real-world shift toward fear of militarized technology and invisible enemies.
The legacy of X Files The End is complicated. It wasn't the perfect ending, but in a way, a perfect ending would have felt wrong for a show built on shadows and unanswered questions. It left us wanting more, which is exactly how we got the movies and the revival. Even if the truth is still out there, the finale reminded us that the search is what actually defines us.
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To get the most out of the experience, watch the Season 8 finale "Existence" immediately before the Season 9 finale. Many fans argue that "Existence"—with the birth of baby William and the long-awaited kiss—is the true emotional ending of the series, while "The Truth" is just the technical one. Compare the two and you'll see a fascinating tug-of-war between the show's desire to be a romantic drama and its need to be a dense sci-fi epic.