The X-Files

Mythology and the classics

high confidence

93 of 219 episodes. Skipping the rest saves 5d 6h3d 22h to watch instead of 9d 4h.

The conspiracy arc plus 24 standalone cases that carry none of it and are the reason people love this show. The Essentials path is plot-complete and experience-poor: its gaps contain Squeeze, Ice, Pusher and Jose Chung's. This is the version to watch if you have the time.

For a first-time viewer who wants the show, not just the plot.

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of 219 episodes
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Updated

Where the story lives

Colonization & the Syndicate
57/57 kept · spine
Monster of the Week
23/149 kept
Super Soldiers
6/6 kept · spine
William
5/5 kept · spine
Samantha Mulder
2/2 kept · spine
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in the path skipped other arcnumbers below are seasons · hover any mark for the episode

The path

Tick episodes off to track where you are. Turn on spoiler hiding below if you have not seen it yet.

Season 01 in the path
The feature film. It follows straight on from the fifth-season finale, and the sixth season opens from it.

The feature film that bridges the fifth and sixth seasons. It follows directly from the fifth-season finale and the sixth-season premiere picks up from it.

Season 111 in the path
Where the partnership starts and the ground rules get set.

Special Agent Dana Scully is partnered with Special Agent Fox Mulder to validate his work on a special project called The X-Files. While he is a believer in the paranormal, fueled by a lost memory where his sister was abducted by aliens; she is a scientist and prefers to look for rational, logical explanations. Their first case takes them to Oregon, to investigate the unsolved deaths of several high school classmates, which Mulder believes are linked to an alien abduction.

The first contact with a source inside the government, and the first hint the work is being watched.

Mulder and Scully head to Ellens Air Force Base to investigate the mysterious case of a military test pilot who disappeared after experiencing strange psychotic behavior. While on the case, Mulder meets a mysterious man dubbed 'Deep Throat', who claims to have classified information about his investigations into the paranormal.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

One of Scully's friends from the FBI academy, now working in the Violent Crimes Unit, asks her to assist him on a homicide investigation involving no clear point of entry. Mulder realizes that this is similar to a series of X-Files case that have occurred every thirty years, and joins in the investigation to stop the latest cycle.

4 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

When an Arctic research team mysteriously kills each other and themselves only days after drilling deeper into the ice than ever before, Mulder and Scully accompany a team of doctors and scientists to investigate. They discover an organism which infects living creatures and amplifies the host's feeling of anger and paranoia, and the new team starts to deteriorate as they wonder who among them are killers.

1 skipped
A crash-site cover-up run in real time, and the clearest look yet at how far the cover-up reaches.

When a tract of lonely woodland is cordoned off between laser fences, and rapidly changing explanations are rampant, Mulder's curiosity carries him beyond the bounds of official jurisdiction-and into the middle of a UFO cleanup. Scully's attempts to protect Mulder from himself are only marginally successful, and neither agent seems capable of protecting the one innocent on the scene, Max Fenig.

2 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Scully has a brush with the paranormal when her recently deceased father appears to her in a vision. Meanwhile, Mulder becomes a skeptic when a death row inmate he helped send to prison claims to be a psychic and offers to lead the agents to a serial killer.

3 skipped
A trail that crosses borders and comes back pointing at the people who assigned the case.

A dramatic increase in UFO sightings and a bizarre attack on a transport truck convince Mulder that he's on the trail of a live alien being covertly transported cross-country. For her part, Scully, equally wary of the involvement of the Lone Gunmen as she is of Deep Throat, suspects a rather more earthly explanation.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Mulder and Scully travel to an American Indian reservation to investigate the death of an Indian man who was mistaken for a wild animal and may have been the legendary Manitou, a man who can shapeshift into a beast.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

When a group of loggers in the Washington State National Forest disappear in the same way that another group disappeared 50 years ago, Mulder and Scully go along to investigate and find themselves trapped in a cabin surrounded by flesh eating insects that only attack at night.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Eugene Tooms, the genetic mutant, is released from the sanitarium and Mulder becomes personally involved to ensure that he is caught in the act of getting the last human liver he needs to go into hibernation for another 30 years.

2 skipped
The season's answer arrives with a cost attached, and the office does not survive it.

When Deep Throat points out a news story about a fugitive who apparently drowned, Mulder and Scully cannot see what makes the case special but they follow it up anyway. With Deep Throat's insistence, they discover evidence of secret government project code-named Purity Control, which uses human test subjects and infects them with extraterrestrial DNA. However, the evidence and everyone who has seen it is quickly being eliminated.

Season 210 in the path
Picking the thread back up from outside the building, with no institutional cover.

With the X-Files closed, Scully has been assigned as an instructor at the FBI Academy while Mulder is doing menial surveillance work. After meeting with Senator Matheson, one of his supporters in regards to The X-Files, Mulder disobeys orders and heads to an abandoned SETI site in Puerto Rico which has unexplainably reactivated itself and could provide proof of contact with extra-terrestrial life.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

AD Skinner sends Mulder to investigate a body which washed into the New Jersey sewer from the ocean. Mulder believes that the basic blue-collar assignment is punishment, but on Skinner's own admission what he discovers is a true X-File.

2 skipped
A hostage situation that turns into testimony about the abduction programme.

Mulder is called to a hostage situation involving Duane Barry, a former FBI Agent who claims to be an alien abductee and wants to get back to the abduction site with someone who will be taken instead of him. Unfortunately, the someone he eventually chooses is Scully.

The direct sequel, and the point the conspiracy stops being abstract.

When Mulder finds out that Scully was kidnapped by Duane Barry, he risks the wrath of his superiors and the annoyance of Agent Krycek in order to do whatever it takes to find her. Meanwhile, Krycek is found to be reporting Mulder's activities to the CSM.

1 skipped
The aftermath, and the first time the cost lands on someone other than Mulder.

Scully mysteriously appears in a Washington hospital, alive but in a coma, and Mulder must fight to keep her alive in order to find out what happened to her and who did it to her. Meanwhile, Scully fights her own personal battle as she decides whether to stay or go on to the next world.

1 skipped
A seemingly unrelated town case that turns out to run on the same programme.

While investigating the connection between the abduction of several teenagers and a rural religious cult, Mulder & Scully discover a secret test being performed on the children using the "Purity Control" alien DNA from 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' which leads Mulder to the Crew-Cut Man, Deep Throat's murderer.

5 skipped
The first of a two-parter that introduces the hybrid programme properly.

After the obituaries of three identical men are e-mailed to Mulder, the agents are contacted by a CIA agent who tells them about a Russian Spy Killer sent to eliminate evidence of Cold War era Russian clones who had infiltrated the American medical establishment.

The second half, and the first real casualty among the people running it.

The alien bounty hunter kidnaps Scully and wants to trade her for Mulder's sister, who is revealed to be a clone herself. After the trade goes badly and Mulder discovers the truth about Samantha, he tracks the bounty hunter to his ship buried in the arctic ice and demands the whereabouts of his real sister.

2 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Mulder and Scully travel to Gibsonton, Florida, a town built and populated by circus and sideshow performers to investigate the death of Jerald Glazebrook, The Alligator Man. While searching for leads on the killer, the agents come across many bizarre characters including the local sheriff who was once known as Jim Jim, the Dog-Faced Boy.

4 skipped
The season ends on documentary evidence and a reckoning with Mulder's father.

Mulder obtains what could be the original and uncut MJ documents containing information about the government's knowledge of extraterrestrial life, which could lead him closer to the truth than ever before. But Mulder's enemies make sure he learns that there's a heavy price to pay for his much sought after truth.

Season 312 in the path
Picking up from the cliffhanger, with the evidence in other hands.

Scully finds her career with the FBI in jeopardy as Mulder is still missing and The Cigarette Smoking Man is pursuing the stolen files. The Navajo elders find Mulder's body in a cave and perform an ancient ceremony to call the spirit back to the empty vessel.

The paperwork behind the programme, and who kept it.

Assistant Director Skinner and Scully are at a standoff when Mulder bursts in and discovers that Skinner has the digital tape. Reunited, Mulder and Scully travel to a secret vault inside a mine and find an elaborate filing system of medical records which reveals that Mulder's sister may not have been the first choice for abduction. Meanwhile, Skinner deals with the Cigarette Smoking Man for their safety.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

In the midst of a psychic sideshow while on a murder case, Mulder and Scully enlist the help of a man who may have a true psychic ability to foresee how people will die to help the agents catch a man killing fortune tellers.

4 skipped
A tape, a train, and the first sight of the experiments as an industry.

An investigation into a video of an alien autopsy puts Mulder and Scully in the middle of a conspiracy involving WWII Japanese scientists brought to America to continue their experiments which may shed light on Scully's abduction.

The second half. What the trains were carrying, and who authorised it.

Mulder is trapped inside a train car which contains a suspected alien-human hybrid and also a bomb, while Scully pursues the truth about her abduction and the mystery behind the implant in her neck.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Widespread panic is caused in a small community after numerous deaths are linked to killer cockroaches and a government agricultural agency is discovered to have set up a secret experiment involving insects.

2 skipped
A salvage operation that surfaces something older than the programme.

A French salvage ship searching for a lost WWII fighter plane unknowingly surfaces an alien which appears in the form of black oil and has the ability to jump hosts. Mulder heads to Hong Kong to investigate the salvage broker who sold the information to the French and he encounters Krycek, who has been selling information from the MJ Documents. As Mulder prepares to take Krycek back to the US, the alien makes its way to Hong Kong and takes control of Krycek.

The direct sequel, and the substance at the centre of the mythology.

Mulder pursues Krycek, not knowing about the alien that has taken over his body, to get back the DAT tape containing the MJ Documents. Meanwhile, the shooting of AD Skinner uncovers evidence that could lead Scully to her sister's murderer.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Mulder and Scully are asked to help in a case involving Robert Patrick Modell, a murderer possessing a psychic ability to force his will onto people. Due to a brain tumor that is slowly killing him, he is searching for a "worthy adversary" and he forces Mulder into a battle of mind over matter.

2 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

An alien abduction of two teenagers with different versions of the same facts prompts a science-fiction novelist to write a book about the incident. However no one involved with the investigation can tell him the full story with any accuracy.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

When a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances are reported near a lake in a small town, Agents Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate. With local folklore of a killer sea serpent running rampant amongst the locals, the agents must take their search for the truth to the water. But before long the agents find out that there may be more to the legend then they first thought.

1 skipped
A season finale that puts the Cigarette Smoking Man's history on the table.

Mulder and Scully search for a mysterious man with the power to heal, whose actions risk exposing the existence of aliens on Earth. Meanwhile a confrontation between Mrs. Mulder and the CSM leads Mulder to the discovery of the only weapon which can kill the aliens.

Season 412 in the path
Resolving the cliffhanger and widening the programme's scale.

Mulder finds himself with Jeremiah Smith, who will meet his end on a small farm tended to by clones bearing resemblance to Samantha. Meanwhile, the Syndicate suspects a traitor is in their midst and plan a trap. Mrs Mulder survives, in spite of Mulder's failure.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

A baby is found buried alive in shallow ground and appears to have birth defects resulting from generations of inbreeding, leading Mulder and Scully to a reclusive family who have a history of inbred children.

4 skipped
A biography of the man behind the conspiracy, told sideways.

Frohike pieces together and recites to Mulder and Scully what could be the possible life story of the Cigarette Smoking Man; from a young captain in the US Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy. What measures will the CSM take to ensure that he remains a mystery forever?

A two-parter that takes the investigation outside American jurisdiction.

A rock sample taken from Mars is intercepted at an airport and infects a security officer with the Black Cancer, while Mulder is given a tip about potentially dangerous paramilitary operations but is doubtful when the informant turns out to be Alex Krycek. Reluctantly, Mulder accepts Krycek's help and tracks the rock to Russia where he discovers an elaborate test being performed by Russian scientists.

The second half, and the cost of bringing evidence home.

While imprisoned in Russia and infected with the Black Cancer, Mulder learns that Krycek is working with the men responsible and everything has been a setup from the start, while Scully and Skinner are called to a suspicious Senate hearing where the only question is the whereabouts of Agent Mulder.

4 skipped
Scully's diagnosis, and its connection back to the abduction programme.

Scully's recent failing health is revealed to be inoperable brain cancer which is common among abductees. She meets with other abductees with the same condition and forms a special bond with a dying woman, while Mulder tries to save her from a doctor who may be connected with the abductions.

2 skipped
A crash investigation that will not stay an accident.

A strange woman informs Mulder that NICAP member Max Fenig (see Fallen Angel) has recently died in a plane crash. After observing Max's body, Mulder suggestion that the plane was intercepted by a UFO is rapidly being covered up by the military.

The second half, and what the wreckage was carrying.

The investigating into a plane crash lands an FBI agent dead and its main witness in military jail. Looking further into abductee Max Fenig's prior whereabouts, Scully and Mulder find evidence of alien technology, which is intercepted before being brought to light.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilised eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.

Skinner acting alone, and the price of the arrangement he has made.

Skinner destroys evidence to cover up a woman's death and poses as Agent Mulder to complete the task. Mulder finds out about Skinner's deception and confronts him and Skinner reveals that he is working for the Cigarette Smoking Man in order to obtain a possible cure for Scully's cancer.

1 skipped
Mulder pursuing his own memory as evidence, with predictable results.

Mulder undergoes an experimental form of hypnotherapy to recover his memories about his sister's abduction but the treatment has side effects including psychotic behaviour and Mulder wakes up one morning in a motel room with someone else's blood all over him.

A finale that puts the entire investigation's premise in doubt.

While investigating the discovery of a preserved alien body found in the mountains of Canada, Mulder is contacted by Michael Kritschgau who tells him about a government conspiracy not to keep alien activity a secret, but to make people believe in them without question and Mulder has been the prime target. With the idea that everything he believes is a lie, Mulder appears to take his own life.

Season 58 in the path
The answer to the finale, and a decision about what to do with it.

Scully helps Mulder fake his own death in order for him to go undetected through the Department of Defence and find out the answers to his new questions about the government hoax concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, at a joint FBI/DOD inquiry, Scully's attempt to drive out the Conspiracy's informant is halted as her cancer takes a bad turn.

The second half. Consequences arrive for everyone who signed off.

Cigarette Smoking Man helps Mulder to obtain Scully's cure and also lets him see his real sister who doesn't turn out to be as happy to see Mulder as he would've liked. In return for this, CSM asks that Mulder quit the FBI and work for him in the Syndicate where he could have power and respect which Mulder turns down, deciding to stay on the side of justice. While Scully's cure appears to have worked, CSM faces his own enemies and disappears, presumed dead.

2 skipped
A family case that turns personal for Scully in a way the programme explains.

Filmed in glorious black and white with a comic book feel to it, this is a modern retelling of Frankenstein as Mulder and Scully get caught up in a town where the residents live on Jerry Springer episodes and fear a two-faced monster who has been impregnating the women.

1 skipped
The direct sequel, and the hardest version of that answer.

DNA testing on Emily reveals that she is actually Scully's daughter and Mulder comes to assist her and to find out where and how the girl was born while Scully tries to help Emily with her own serious illness, a rare form of anemia.

4 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

After Mulder chases down and kills a young man whom he believes to be a vampire, Scully realizes that his fangs are fake. The agents then return to DC, aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event.

A gathering that reveals a second faction with its own plan.

Mulder and Scully meet Cassandra Spender, a woman who claims to be a multiple abductee and wants to deliver a positive message about the aliens. Mulder who now is skeptical of extraterrestrial activity and believes that the government is behind the abduction phenomena is disturbed when Scully forms a special bond with the woman. A series of group attacks against abductees take place and the shadowy Syndicate believes that a rebel alien resistance is attempting to destroy all their work.

The second half, and the first sight of resistance from inside.

After the gathering at the abduction site where everyone is killed by the rebel bounty hunters, Cassandra Spender disappears and Mulder is blamed by her son, Jeffrey, who is an up-and-coming FBI agent and opposed to Mulder's work. Meanwhile, the Syndicate are continuing their tests to create a vaccine for the Black Cancer and Marita Covarrubias becomes an unwilling test subject.

5 skipped
A season finale that closes the office and opens the film.

Cigarette Smoking Man returns as Mulder investigates the attempted assassination of a young boy with psychic powers who may be the proof that he has looked for all his life. On his way he encounters many enemies especially in the finale' as his office and every X-File is torched by CSM.

Season 68 in the path
Picking up immediately after the film, with the assignment changed.

Mulder is less than thrilled when an Office of Professional Conduct board refuses to reassign him and Scully to The X-Files and even more so when he learns that Agent Spender and Agent Fowley have become their successors. When Gibson Praise reappears and comes to them for help, Mulder and Scully attempt to continue their quest undercover despite having fewer friends and less access and protection than ever before.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has re-appeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future but evidence further suggests that it is he, who is back in the past.

5 skipped
Skinner's turn, and a countdown that ties back to the programme.

Mulder and Scully have 24 hours to save Assistant Director Skinner from being killed by a biologically engineered disease. The disease appears to be created by a shadowy government organisation but in order to save Skinner's life; they must determine who wants him dead, and why. With Skinner's condition worsening Mulder seeks assistance from Senator Matheson who he hopes can provide some answers and help him to find a cure.

1 skipped
The Syndicate's own story, told by the men who built it.

While Cigarette Smoking Man recites to an unseen listener everything about the work of the Syndicate involving a global conspiracy in co-operation with an alien species, Cassandra Spender reappears and is pursued by the scientists who would rather kill her than keep her alive. Cassandra runs to Mulder's apartment and demands that he shoots her because she is the culmination of 50 years work - a living alien/human hybrid, and colonisation will begin if the aliens find out about her.

The second half, and the endgame they had been working toward.

CSM reveals all the government secrets from the past 50 years in order for his son, Jeffery Spender, to join him in his work. Mulder learns that the final stage of the conspiracy will soon begin with the hybridization of the Syndicate members and he must stop it from happening. Agent Spender deceives his father and arranges for Mulder and Scully to be reassigned to the X-Files, which doesn't sit too well with CSM.

5 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

A writer living next to Mulder becomes obsessed with Scully and confesses to her that he is using her for a character in his novel. Scully finds herself strangely drawn to him even though he is now the prime suspect in the murder case that she and Mulder are investigating.

2 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

When the bodies of a couple who have been missing for less than a week are discovered to have been reduced to bone, Mulder suggests that recent paranormal phenomena in the area may have caused the accelerated decomposition.

A finale that moves the mythology from conspiracy to something far older.

Two scientists confer about each of their metal objects that were found in Africa and they theorise that the objects are pieces of a puzzle which could be undeniable proof that human, plant and animal life did not originate on this planet. When one of the scientists is killed and the objects are stolen, the agents investigate and Mulder begins to experience severe neurological pain caused by the objects.

Season 78 in the path
The direct continuation, with the artefact's effect spreading.

While Scully travels to Africa to piece together the meaning of the symbols on the spaceship beached on the Ivory Coast, Mulder is imprisoned by his own frenetic brain activity. He manages to get a message to Skinner who finds Kritschgau and together they try to understand what is happening to Mulder before it is too late.

The second half, and a choice made on Mulder's behalf.

Scully frantically searches for a way to help her ailing partner without having anyone to turn to for help, while a catatonic Mulder's dreams lead him away from his mission and the X-Files to a place which he believes is a better life.

7 skipped
The oldest question in the series, finally being asked properly.

A young girl unexplainably disappears from her home and Mulder requests the case even though it is a full FBI matter, not just an X-File. When Mulder takes some outrageous leaps to convince the girl's parents that she will be found, Scully fears that Mulder is becoming too personally involved with the case because of his sister's abduction.

The second half, and an answer that closes the file.

After arresting the murderer of Amber-Lynn LaPierre and discovering a mass gravesite containing the bodies of dozens of missing children, a man comes to Mulder and claims to have had visions of other victims who aren't buried at the site. Despite Scully's objections, he takes Mulder on a journey which reveals what truly happened to his sister.

A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

A Los Angeles police officer who is being filmed for the show COPS is attacked by a strange monster and Mulder and Scully are investigating the case. Scully is wary of having their faces put on national television but Mulder welcomes the publicity.

2 skipped
Scully alone with the conspiracy's architect, and the offer he makes.

After the miraculous recovery of a young boy who had cancer, Mulder and Scully investigate what has happened but Scully is shocked when The Smoking Man tells her that he cured the boy and offers to show Scully the cure for cancer if she travels with him. But hides her trip from Mulder.

5 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Mulder and Scully discover a jinniah (genie) in a rug who, after 500 years of granting wishes, has come to the conclusion that people are still as greedy and self-centered as they always have been and she begins to corrupt the wishes she grants if they are not 'specific' enough.

A finale that returns to where the first season started, and takes someone with it.

Mulder and Scully return to the town of their first X-Files investigation where a UFO has crashed in the forest. CSM arranges for Krycek to be released from prison in order for him to make contact with the aliens and begin rebuilding the 'Project', while Scully's health appears to be taking a turn.

Season 810 in the path
A new partner, an old case, and a search run by people who do not believe it.

Newly appointed Deputy Director Kersh organizes a manhunt for Mulder and assigns Agent John Doggett to head the team. Scully and Skinner go along with the investigation but are warned by Kersh that they will be fired if anything is said about aliens. Scully , along with the Lone Gunmen, surmise that the Bounty Hunter is trying to erase all evidence of abductions and they realize that he may be going after Gibson Praise, who is now living at a school in Arizona. Agent Doggett comes to the same conclusion and his team race Scully and Skinner to the school where they find Mulder trying to kidnap Gibson.

The second half, and the search moving from procedure to pursuit.

As the search for Mulder intensifies in the Arizona desert, Gibson Praise leads Scully to believe that she is truly closer to her target. Meanwhile AD Kersh informs Agent Doggett that he has been assigned as Mulder's successor on the X-Files.

1 skipped
A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Scully evades Doggett's help in investigating a vicious murder in a remote area of Utah and she is trapped in the small town by a religious cult that believe a slug-like creature is the second coming of God who needs a human host to survive.

8 skipped
The programme's fertility work, and what it means for Scully now.

When Scully and Doggett are contacted by a man who claims his wife was murdered shortly after giving birth to an alien baby, Scully digs deeper into reports of alien fertilization on humans and begins to question her own pregnancy and its conception.

A field of evidence that changes the search entirely.

When Teresa Hoese, the woman Scully & Mulder met the previous spring in Oregon just before Mulder was abducted, is found in a desert, returned from testing done on her by aliens, Doggett alerts Scully that this could have something to do with Mulder and his whereabouts.

The direct sequel. What was found, and what it costs to keep.

Shortly after Mulder is buried, Billy Miles is found very dead but somehow comes back to life. Skinner and Scully put all their hopes into digging up Mulder and discovering that he too, is still alive. As Mulder lies in hospital without indication that he is going to fully recover, Krycek comes to Skinner and offers him a vaccine to the virus that has infected Mulder - but the cost of the vaccine is that Skinner has to kill Scully's unborn child.

The first clear sight of the replacement programme.

Mulder's request for reassignment to the X-Files is denied by Kersh, who hopes that Mulder will simply quit the FBI. When a census worker is killed on the White House lawn trying to get information to the President, Mulder gets in over his head trying to discover what the man knew.

1 skipped
An offshore case that confirms how far the replacements have spread.

After Agent Mulder goes beyond his jurisdiction to shine light on a possible X-file, Doggett is assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of two men aboard an oil rig. Once he arrives, he finds Mulder has taken it upon himself to start his own investigation. Mulder soon becomes convinced that the rig is drilling the black oil. Doggett and Mulder must attempt to stop the spread of the alien virus while avoiding the infected crew.

1 skipped
A finale two-parter, with the pregnancy at the centre of it.

Mulder and Doggett join forces to investigate the arson attack on a genetics lab where one of the doctors suspected of experimenting with alien impregnation is killed. They encounter Billy Miles, who has been changed into an alien replicant after his recent abduction and is attempting to erase evidence of the tests; part of the Syndicate's conspiracy with an alien race. When a woman helping Scully out at home is found to be a part of the conspiracy, the agents, along with Monica Reyes and Alex Krycek, know they must protect Scully and her baby from Billy Miles and get her out of the city.

The second half, and the birth the whole season has been building toward.

With otherworldly factions in pursuit, Mulder and the agents race to safeguard the birth of Scully's child. Scully and Reyes take refuge in an abandoned town where Doggett grew up. Meanwhile Doggett and Skinner have the final showdown with Alex Krycek and continue to fight off the replicants but how successful will they be?

Season 97 in the path
The new season's premise, and who is running the programme now.

Agent Doggett investigates the death of an EPA official after his car is forced off a bridge by a woman he picked up. He asks for assistance on the case from Scully, who has returned to her teaching position at the FBI Academy in Quantico.

The second half, and the shape of the opposition.

Doggett catches up with Shannon McMahon, the woman who the EPA official picked up. She claims to be a super solider and that the people she has killed were preparing the water supply and she wants Doggett to expose the truth.

6 skipped
An artefact case that reconnects to the sixth-season finale.

When pieces of the spaceship beached in Africa resurface, the conspiracy within the FBI attempts to hide the information from the X-Files, especially the one person for whom the pieces have a special significance - Scully. When Doggett and Reyes discover that Scully and her child have been put in great danger, they race to protect her and William from the evil forces pursuing him, and Scully is forced to take drastic measures to protect her child.

The second half, and what the rubbings were always pointing at.

Scully is anxious to recover William from his kidnappers and takes matters into her own hands when the FBI's attempts to assist in the investigation are less than helpful. With the help of the Lone Gunmen, Scully discovers terrifying information about her child's captors, and is once again forced to confront the mystery regarding the sinister interest in her son.

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The child at the centre of it, and a decision about his safety.

Doggett catches an intruder trying to steal documents from the office; the mystery man baffles everyone with enough knowledge of the X-files to make them suspect that he just might be Mulder, despite disfigurement. Scully's fears regarding her son's safety are triggered, when the stranger interacts with him, and subsequent rethinking leads her to make a heartbreaking sacrifice.

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The series finale, part one: everything on the record at last.

After not knowing Fox Mulder's whereabouts for the last year, A.D. Skinner and Agent Scully learn he is being held for the murder of a military man he couldn't possibly have killed: Knowle Rohrer, one of the government's secret super soldiers. With Skinner acting as Mulder's defence, people who Mulder has dealings with during his last nine years as an FBI agent testify on his behalf. But the military tribunal isn't interested in the truth. When an unexpected person comes to Mulder's rescue, Mulder refuses to slip north over the border to safety. Instead, he heads southwest to the Anasazi ruins of New Mexico seeking a mysterious wise man whom the Indians call The Keeper of the Truth.

Part two, and the verdict.

After not knowing Fox Mulder's whereabouts for the last year, A.D. Skinner and Agent Scully learn he is being held for the murder of a military man he couldn't possibly have killed: Knowle Rohrer, one of the government's secret super soldiers. With Skinner acting as Mulder's defence, people who Mulder has dealings with during his last nine years as an FBI agent testify on his behalf. But the military tribunal isn't interested in the truth. When an unexpected person comes to Mulder's rescue, Mulder refuses to slip north over the border to safety. Instead, he heads southwest to the Anasazi ruins of New Mexico seeking a mysterious wise man whom the Indians call The Keeper of the Truth.

Season 103 in the path
The revival's reframing of the entire conspiracy.

Thirteen years after the original series run, the next mind-bending chapter of the thrilling series THE X-FILES has arrived. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have been contacted by Tad O'Malley, a popular conspiracy theorist web-TV show host who believes he has uncovered a significant government conspiracy. With the assistance of FBI Asst. Dir. Walter Skinner, O'Malley seeks to enlist the help of former X-Files agents Mulder and Scully, who have since severed ties with the FBI. Through O'Malley they are introduced to Sveta, a possible alien abductee who shares shocking information with them that will challenge everything that Mulder has ever believed about the existence of aliens and the government's role in covering them up.

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A standalone case. No bearing on the conspiracy - it is here because it is one of the best hours the show made.

Witnesses claim a strange creature was responsible for killing a person in the woods; Mulder confronts some of his own demons.

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The consequence of that reframing, played out at scale.

The investigations that Mulder and Scully previously began with conspiracy theorist and web-TV show host Tad O'Malley seem to have awakened powerful enemies. A widespread panic begins as people all over the country suddenly start falling gravely ill, and Scully must look within to try and find a cure. Meanwhile, Mulder confronts the man whom he believes to be behind it all, but another figure from Mulder and Scully's past may prove to be the key to their salvation.

Season 113 in the path
Answering the cliffhanger and correcting the record.

Picking up after the last event series' cliffhanger, Mulder and Scully learn that they aren't the only ones desperately searching for their long-lost son, William. The very fate of the world may depend on it.

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The William thread picked back up, years on.

When a pair of teenage girls attack one another, each believing the other to be a monster, Mulder and Scully find that their investigation could possibly lead back to their long-lost son, William.

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The last episode, and the closing of the family story.

Mulder and Scully rush to find an on-the-run William, while the Cigarette Smoking Man pushes forward with his ultimate plan.

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