My Struggle IV

Just finished watching the final episode. I loved it! I know I am in the minority on this, but considering the characters have aged and all that has gone on, I thought it was a very good episode and a very good ending. Everyone survives and they grow and yeah there is some sadness but, in the end it is an episode in keeping with the characters growth. After all, the episode centered on Mulder finding peace in a purpose. I thought it ended with that so that being said I thought it was a pretty good episode.

This is one of my favorite seasons of the series, and I am a long time fan since the beginning. Other than My Struggle III, which is oddly shot and edited, the rest is the episodes are great! Including this final episode. Not sure why all the hate. It's like many of you just wanted to hate it and didn't see some of the creativity and ingenuity of the stand alone. And now we won't get another season.

I'm going to try my best to avoid spoilers here.....

After reading the mixed reviews here about the series finale (& season 10 & 11 as a whole) I have to agree & disagree with a lot of the other reviewers input. I've been an avid fan of The X Files since it started in 1993 & I've come to really enjoy each individual episode as they've been shown. I must say I do prefer it when each episode tells a different story which is what you get mostly from the earlier seasons. It's when a storyline starts that's when the boat starts to rock!

We all have our favourite episodes (even our favourite seasons) but I have to admit I've found it quite difficult to connect with these last two seasons 10 & 11) I think it's mostly because there's so much character change in Mulder & Scully. They seem to have distanced from their original characteristics from the earlier seasons (1-9). It probably doesn't help that you have a 14 year gap between seasons 9 & 10. I always think a TV series works best when it's continuous & remains intact, but that doesn't seem to happen here. Whatever happened to Mulder & Scully doing their usual chasing through the woods, their investigations, their autopsies on bodies that suddenly flinch & come back to life etc, etc? We love that stuff!! You'll also notice, particularly in Season 11 how husky Gillian's voice has become - yeah sure she's older now but it's like she's smoked about 20 cigarettes during shooting her scenes. And the action, where's it all gone?

There is a lesson to be learnt here & I'm going to refer to another TV series from the 80's, if many of you will remember; Beauty & The Beast (1987-1990) starring Linda Hamilton & Ron Perlman. That ran for 3 seasons & somewhere during season 2, Hamilton suddenly broke the news to the producers that she wanted out of the show, therefore they had to quickly work around her departure - do they stop after Season 2 or carry on with Season 3 without her...? Ofcourse you can guess - they made the mistake of carrying on with Season 3 without her (bringing in a new female lead but not so much replacing her character). And ofcourse ratings started to drop, there's a reason Season 3 only had 12 episodes as an appose to Season 1 & 2 having 22 episodes each!

Now The X Files is more or less going down the same road & I can only hope that Chris Carter will read this someday & know that sometimes a TV series doesn't always work if you take one of the lead actors out of the show. Especially when you take Beauty out of Beauty and the Beast!

With Gillian Anderson's announcement that Season 11 is the end for her, Chris Carter has stated that there are more stories to tell - but he doesn't want to continue the show without her. So of course taking the X out of the File, you get David Duchovny alone; but do they bring in a new female lead or can they talk her into returning with one last Season 12 installment (will a pay rise tempt Anderson, ya think?) Who knows? At the end of the day, the fans have come to love Mulder & Scully as a couple of FBI Agents, together as one.

11 seasons, 217 episodes & 25 years later, is this the end of The X Files?

This season started out with a fantastic bang with the overall story arc and I thoroughly enjoyed the dramatic turns that "My Struggle 3' dramatically took. As the season rolled on it seemed to take a mediocre turn with the next 3 eps until the mysterious "ghouli" episode that worked into the arc decently well. The next 3 were pretty solid especially "familiar" which felt like the most authentic classic X files episode we've gotten for years.The second to last was rather forgettable, but this season finale was one of the most intensely powerful and exciting episodes of the entire series. It starts off from the get go with high octane pacing and action with Mulder and Scully pursuing William. Through many twists and enthralling sequences it culminates into a truly massive set of important events that shake the entire mythos arc to the core and contain some moments and things you will never see coming. It has some of the most well executed action the show has ever seen as well as some of the most brutal imagery that elevates the story's crucial magnitude near flawlessly. I'm amazed they packed all of this into one episode, but they did it awesomely and in a very satisfying concluding fashion. With an ending that pulls at your heartstrings with multiple different factors, you will most likely feel a sense of closure and extreme curiosity if the series will continue. It leaves a huge door open for future possibility even if the wonderful Gillian Anderson won't be apart of it sadly.

I just had to say it. I've been reading it on Mulder's poster since 1993. But today: I want to believe.

I waited until today to watch this. In fact, I took my time watching all of the episodes after "Kitten".

I felt that we deserved more than just 16 measly episodes. And although 10 episodes is better than 6, it's not 22. Which is what The X Files needs to tell any episodic story. 22 Episodes usually satisfies the most hard to please X-Phile. But 6 and then 10? It makes us picky. It makes us feel that Chris could have done better, when all he is doing is trying to write appropriate stories for these modern times.

Because the X Files is really not an episodic show, it has always been an Anthology. It is more Monster of the Week than what we have come to know as Mythos. But the Mythos is still important. But for 9 whole years, we were given 22 hours, some of them told the story that started back in "Deep Throat" and "Red Museum", others told the stories like Syzygy, War of the Coprophages, Ghost in the Machine, Kill Switch, and even Tithonus.

Sometimes, Chris Carter has made us angry with story lines that didn't seem to be anything. "That doesn't look like anything to me..." Other times, he did great. He wrote and directed a whole Theatrical release. It wasn't what we expected, but it was an X-File, and it did fit into the Mythos. And it also grossed us out. But 8 years after that, they give us the Televised version, but for only 6 episodes. Then only 10. And now, none, if Gillian keeps with her promise to never again be Skully. I wish I could talk her out of quitting- She wants to do more, to act more, but she's already done it. She's been in a lot, some good some great, some not so. Robot Overlords for cryin' out lout! But I loved her in that.

But here, is a subject people have been talking about since seasons 8 and 9: WILLIAM. We missed him, and the X-Files, for 8 years- well, not quite 8, then another 8. Time Enough for him to grow into a young man. But the infant that played Baby William in S8 and S9, had reddish hair. William has Dark Hair. But now that we know who his real Father is... Funny, because Mulder did not know this.

So. We had two factions vying for access to William. Maybe even 3 factions. The "Cancerman Faction" which was Cancerman, Monica Reyes, and Skinner- Which was focused on ending the Human race and starting over again, the "Y faction" headed by Mr Y (the creepy AC Peterson) and Barbara Hershey - I got the impression that they wanted to send "people" into space, but only their consciences (refer to episode "This"), although I don't know why in 10,000 blazes they thought they needed William for this, and then finally we have the X-Files Faction, Mulder and Skully, which is more like, William has been sending images to Skully.

All Three of these who are hunting William collide in this last X-File. Anyone to gets in Mulder's way in fact, he will knock them over. and William is not helpless.

Remember in Season 10 Episode 2? There was a Boy who could do very bad things if he put his mind to it. He had a sister, and together, they could cause some serious carnage- If provoked.

William came from the same source: And he's more powerful than the kids from Founder's Mutation.

Unfortunately, halfway through the episode, I figured out the ending William saw. I normally don't guess correctly, this time I did.

But now, we have an ending, or a new beginning, depending on how you look at it. Maybe Gillian will change her mind. But the ending music by Mark Snow is the same Music from "I want to believe", and hearing it here, it gives me hope. Maybe more X-Files will happen, we'll find out if Skully really is immortal. But this story, despite being the last X-File, gave me a good feeling. Just like the ending of last year's "Babylon", where we saw The Lone Gunmen's "Ghosts" partying with Mulder in a Texas Line-Dance bar. There is hope, that the things that are good in this world will win out over the bad. That we will have freedom and not at the expense of anyone else's freedom. Or Free Speech without anyone else's speech being hampered. And all it took were a few episodes of The X-Files to remind us of this. But now, that resource has been closed off. We just have to do it ourselves.

5-26-2018