The mythology of The X-Files, sometimes referred to as its "mytharc" by the show's staff and fans, follows the quest of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), a believer in supernatural phenomena, and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), his skeptical partner. Their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, was also often involved. Beginning with season 8, John Doggett, another skeptic, and Monica Reyes, a believer like Mulder, were introduced. The overarching story, which spans events as early as the 1940s, is built around a government conspiracy to hide the truth about alien existence and their doomsday plan. Not all episodes advanced the mythology plot, but those that did were often set up by Mulder or Scully via an opening monologue.
Most mythological elements in The X-Files relate to extraterrestrial beings, referred to by the writers as "Colonists", whose primary goal is to colonize Earth. Late in the series, this was revealed to have been planned for the year 2012.
Episodes This list of mythology episodes was originally taken from official sources, The X-Files Mythology range of DVDs, and the book The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths and the Movies. +# In SeasonTitleOriginal Air DateNotesSeason 11PilotSeptember 10, 19932Deep ThroatSeptember 17, 199310Fallen AngelNovember 19, 199317E.B.E.February 18, 199424The Erlenmeyer FlaskMay 13, 1994Season 21Little Green MenSeptember 16, 19945Duane BarryOctober 14, 19946AscensionOctober 21, 19948One BreathNovember 11, 1994DVD only10Red MuseumDecember 9, 199416ColonyFebruary 10, 199517End GameFebruary 17, 199525AnasaziMay 19, 1995Season 31The Blessing WaySeptember 22, 19952Paper ClipSeptember 29, 19959NiseiNovember 24, 199510731December 1, 199515Piper MaruFebruary 9, 199616ApocryphaFebruary 16, 199624Talitha CumiMay 17, 1996Season 41HerrenvolkOctober 4, 19967Musings of a Cigarette Smoking ManNovember 17, 19968TunguskaNovember 24, 19969TermaDecember 1, 199614Memento MoriFebruary 9, 199717Tempus FugitMarch 16, 199718MaxMarch 23, 199721Zero SumApril 27, 199723DemonsMay 11, 1997Book only24GethsemaneMay 18, 1997Season 51ReduxNovember 2, 19972Redux II November 9, 19976Christmas CarolDecember 7, 1997Book only7EmilyDecember 14, 1997Book only13Patient XMarch 1, 199814The Red and the BlackMarch 8, 199820The EndMay 17, 1998The X-Files: Fight the Future (feature-length film set between Seasons 5 and 6)Season 61The BeginningNovember 8, 19989S.R. 819January 17, 199911Two FathersFebruary 7, 199912One SonFebruary 14, 199922BiogenesisMay 16, 1999Season 71The Sixth ExtinctionNovember 7, 19992The Sixth Extinction II: Amor FatiNovember 14, 199910Sein Und ZeitFebruary 6, 200011ClosureFebruary 13, 2000DVD only15En AmiMarch 19, 200022RequiemMay 21, 2000DVD onlySeason 81WithinNovember 5, 20002WithoutNovember 12, 200011The GiftFebruary 4, 2001Book only13Per ManumFebruary 18, 200114This Is Not HappeningFebruary 25, 200115DeadAliveApril 1, 200116Three WordsApril 8, 200118VienenApril 29, 200120EssenceMay 13, 200121ExistenceMay 20, 2001Season 91Nothing Important Happened TodayNovember 11, 20012Nothing Important Happened Today IINovember 18, 20016Trust No 1January 6, 20029ProvenanceMarch 3, 200210ProvidenceMarch 10, 2002DVD only16WilliamApril 28, 200219 20The TruthMay 19, 2002Season 101My StruggleJanuary 24, 20166My Struggle IIFebruary 22, 2016Season 111My Struggle IIIJanuary 3, 20185GhouliJanuary 31, 201810My Struggle IVMarch 21, 2018
Chronology Season 1 FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) has made a name for himself, "Spooky Mulder," working on X-Files—unexplained cases which may be paranormal in origin. He is appointed a partner in these investigations—Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson)—with his superiors hoping that she will be able to debunk and discredit his work. Their first case together is the investigation of possible abductions in Oregon, which falters when their evidence is destroyed in a fire.. A later case, involving the disappearance of a United States Air Force test pilot, sees the introduction of secretive informant Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin), who continues to provide the agents sensitive information.. This help is supplemented by conspiracy theorist group The Lone Gunmen, who are contacted for help in a further abduction case.. Deep Throat is killed, however, when he helps the agents uncover details of a government human cloning program, and the X-Files unit is closed shortly thereafter..
Season 2 Unable to continue his work with Scully, Mulder obtains information about possible extraterrestrial contact in Puerto Rico, finding that the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory is being forcibly closed.. Although the pair are allowed to resume their work, Scully is later kidnapped by an unhinged multiple alien abductee, Duane Barry. Barry takes Scully to a hilltop where she is then abducted, presumably by aliens.. She is found comatose at a later date, having mysteriously arrived at a hospital, and recovers several days later. Mulder receives a call from his father, who informs him that his sister Samantha (Megan Leitch), who had been abducted as a child, has returned. Samantha is being pursued by a shapeshifting bounty hunter, who is assassinating human clones. Samantha is killed, although it is revealed that she was simply one of a number of clones, produced using alien tissue to create an alien-human hybrid..
The Lone Gunmen contact Mulder and Scully about a successful attempt by a friend of theirs to hack the United States Department of Defense computer system. The hacker, Kenneth Soona (Bernie Coulson), is able to give Mulder the downloaded information on a digital cassette. Soona is subsequently assassinated, and the downloaded files are found to be written in Navajo. Contacting Albert Hosteen (Floyd Red Crow Westerman)—a Navajo man capable of translating the files—Mulder is shown a box-car full of what appear to be alien corpses. He is trapped in the box-car by the series' antagonist, The Smoking Man (William B. Davis), and left for dead after it is destroyed.
Season 3 Mulder is later found and nursed back to health by Hosteen. Meanwhile, Scully investigates the possible involvement of the smallpox eradication program in human genetic experimentation, discovering that a Nazi scientist who defected during Operation Paperclip has been conducting human experimentation to create alien-human hybrids. Dana's sister Melissa (Melinda McGraw) is shot by assassins who mistake her for Dana, and dies in the hospital.. Investigating evidence of an alien autopsy, Mulder infiltrates a secretive government train carriage carrying an alien-human hybrid being experimented on by Japanese scientists. Mulder is almost killed by a Syndicate operative guarding the hybrid, but is saved by his informant X (Steven Williams). X had been tipped off about Mulder's activities by Scully. Scully, meanwhile, meets a group of women with abduction experiences similar to her own, and meets another member of the Syndicate known as the First Elder (Don S. Williams). The First Elder claims that during Scully's abduction she was placed on a similar train car and experimented upon by the Japanese scientists.
The crew of a French salvage ship trying to raise a World War II-era submarine from the sea floor are stricken with massive radiation burns—except for one man, who has been infected with a parasitic black oil discovered on the submarine. The black oil, controlling the crewman's body, passes into the crewman's wife and uses her to travel to Hong Kong in pursuit of a middleman selling government secrets. Mulder is after the same man. After Mulder catches Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea) in Hong Kong, the black oil passes itself to Krycek. Scully determines that the submarine had been involved in discovering the black oil on the sea floor during World War II, under the guise of finding a sunken fighter plane. The infected Krycek makes his way to a missile silo used to hide a UFO, and the black oil escapes his body to board the craft. Meanwhile, Scully has tracked down Luis Cardinal, the man responsible for killing her sister.Lovece, pp.211–212
Season 4 When the Syndicate suspect that a member is passing information to Mulder and Scully, they organise a canary trap to find the leak, using information about the safety of Mulder's mother as bait. X's role as an informant is discovered, and he is shot dead, although he is able to pass along the name of another informant who can be of use to Mulder—Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden), the Special Representative to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.Meisler (1998), pp.19–25. Mulder seeks Covarrubias' aid when he attempts to reach the site of the Tunguska event, in Russia, to investigate the source of a further black oil contamination. While there, Mulder is held in a gulag and used—successfully—as a test subject for a black-oil vaccine. He escapes and is able to return to America, having found out that Krycek is working with the Russians.Meisler (1998), pp.95–110 Scully, who has been diagnosed with cancer, is unsure of her future with the FBI. Mulder is convinced that her condition is a result of her earlier abduction, and is prepared to make a deal with the Syndicate to find a cure. He is dissuaded by Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), who secretly makes such a deal himself.Meisler (1998), pp. 221–230
Season 5 While being pursued by an assassin responsible for a hoax alien corpse discovered on a mountaintop, Mulder fakes his own suicide, mutilating the assassin's face to provide a decoy body. He uses the distraction to infiltrate The Pentagon in search of a cure for Scully's cancer. Meanwhile, Scully is able to uncover and reveal a Syndicate connection within the FBI.Meisler (1998), pp.259–270Meisler (1999), pp.27–46
While a rebel alien race secretly attacks several groups of former alien abductees, the agents meet Cassandra Spender (Veronica Cartwright), a woman who claims to be a multiple abductee and wants to deliver a positive message about aliens.Meisler, pp 173–184 After Cassandra goes missing and her son, Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens), angrily attempts to push his way into the FBI, Mulder has Scully put under hypnosis to learn the truth about her abduction. The Syndicate, meanwhile, speed up their tests of the black oil vaccine, sacrificing their own to do so.Meisler, pp. 187–196 Later, the assassination of a chess grandmaster leads Mulder and Scully into an investigation that strikes at the heart of the X-Files: They learn that the assassin's real target was a telepathic boy named Gibson Praise (Jeff Gulka).Meisler, pp. 269–280
The X-Files: Fight the Future (feature film)
The X-Files have been shut down again, and Mulder and Scully are sent on a mission to deal with a terrorist bomb threat. However, after a government building is destroyed, Mulder is approached by a mysterious doctor, Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau), who reveals that a new strain of the black oil has been discovered in North Texas. The new strain allows an extraterrestrial to gestate inside the host within 96 hours. Kurtzweil argues that the conspiracy deliberately placed the bomb within the government to hide the evidence. After Scully is stung by a black-oil-infected bee and abducted, the Well-Manicured Man gives Mulder her location and a weak vaccine, developed by the Syndicate. The Well-Manicured Man is killed by a car bomb, but his information leads Mulder to Antarctica, where he discovers a massive alien spaceship buried. Inside the ship, he finds Scully and administers the vaccine, which heals her.
Season 6