Scully and Mulder (Fox)

[This article also appeared on eXoNews May 22, 2002. Ed.]

By FLAtRich

Hollywood May 22, 2002 (eXoNews) - With all due respect to John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), the ninth season of The X-Files finished up with the right guy holding the bag. In the end, Chris Carter handed the legacy of the entire nine years of The X-Files back to Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). It was the best of all possible endings. 

Mulder has won a few and lost a few. He has still not defeated the ultimate evil power that he battles, but he has won Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). We are reminded of the fact that Scully was once Mulder's greatest skeptic - that she was hired to help her superiors defeat him. Now she is with him not just as his partner, not just as his faithful Watson, but also as his intellectual equal and soul mate.

We lost a few too in those nine years. Some we loved, like Byers, Langly and Frohike. Others we just hated, like Follmer, Spender and Fowley. Others we loved to hate, like Cigarette-Smoking Man, Krycek, The Well-Manicured Man and The Alien Bounty Hunter.

Some survived to an uncertain future. Skinner, Kersh, Marita Covarrublias, Gibson Praise, and the wonderfully loyal Reyes and Doggett. We are pretty sure we'll meet them again, but it's funny how people disappear.

Nine seasons ago, Mulder was a kind of wimpy guy who often wore glasses and a pocket protector, watched porno movies in his spare time and hung out with the geeky likes of The Lone Gunmen. Scully was a baby-faced intellectual scientist with a medical degree who faithfully typed the details of every case she and Mulder investigated into her laptop, presumably to be delivered into the hands of Mulder's enemies, her bosses at the FBI.

Black ops choppers take out CSM in "The Truth" (Fox)

Now Mulder is a rugged man, toughened by years of fighting the most evil opponents that the natural and supernatural world could throw at him. Frozen, infested, burned, tortured, shot, abducted, brainwashed, betrayed and often left for dead, Fox Mulder has survived to surpass the exploits of any other hero in modern memory. He has lost his faith and restored it.

He has beaten the odds to find his Truth, and we know that he will beat them again and again until they are defeated and The Truth is known.

Scully has lost her father and sister and given up her only child in the years she has pursued the Truth with Mulder. She has suffered at the hands of secret powers and the very inexplicable forces of nature that she at first denied. Scully also has nearly died and been reborn in the chase.

She tolerated and sometimes resented her role and partnership with Mulder, but somewhere along the way she found that more than anything else she loved this impossible, unbelievable man. She discovered that she was meant to be with him.

Now their bond is absolute and Mulder and Scully wait together as hunted fugitives for the next chapter of Mulder's saga to unfold.

We wait with them, not knowing where Chris Carter will take them, but trusting that he will get it right.