The X-Files review: Season 11, episode 1My Struggle III

Trust No One. The Truth Is Out There. I Want To Believe.

The X-Files has used these 3 lines to signify the ongoing conspiracies, the search for truth, and the fight for our future. Mulder and Scully have been key to this in one way or another for nigh on a quarter of a century. “My Struggle III,” the first episode of the 11th season, is a bit of a weird way to start but ultimately sets a very clear path towards what lies ahead.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

A lot of big ‘bombshells’ were dropped last night. To be honest there was enough material there to support a good 4 or 5 episodes if this was The X-Files of the 90s. Think about it though, The X-Files were born of a time where the biggest troubles didn’t lie with what the Government was doing, or what social issues were wrong at the time. Chris Carter looked towards the stars, to identify and work out where the threat was coming from.

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However, we live in a time where as a collective, individuals want to fight and stand up to the political and social strife we are in. Our fight isn’t up in the stars, it is what we see every day.

This is what Carter has done with “My Struggle III.” He has made it clear that the Aliens aren’t interested in us anymore. We have screwed up. It is time for things to change. The Cigarette Smoking Man wants to eradicate all but a few with an Alien pathogen. The opposition wishes to take a chosen few and escape to the stars. Mulder and Scully will fight them both, and apparently their son William is the key to all of this.

The finale for season 10 was pretty awful. It just kind of ended with a very poorly executed ‘what next?’. The opening of this new season reveals that this was merely a vision, Scully’s vision to be precise. It was a look into what was going to happen. It can be seen as a lazy screenwriting way of getting out of a cliffhanger like the one we had last year but it actually worked. We are back to the Agents working behind the scenes, trying to uncover the darkness ahead.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see the return of Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens), whom we last saw looking very worse for wear. He must be pleased with his plastic surgeon. Annabelle Gish returns as Monica Reyes, now working with the Cigarette Smoking Man, corrupted by his ideology. Has Skinner gone the same way? I sure hope not. He should know better.

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The reveal that the CSM is William’s father is hard for me to swallow. There has always been suspicion as to who (or what) is actually William’s father, and personally I wanted that to remain murky. Would Mulder still stand by William, even though he isn’t the Dad? I’d like to think so, maybe this will come up later on in the season.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson still have fantastic chemistry, and they slip back into Fox Mulder and Dana Scully with such ease, it is just a pleasure to see them as these two on-screen. This may be Gillian Anderson’s last season of The X-Files from what she has said in interviews, lets hope they make it count.

The conspiracy has changed. The mythology is still unfolding.

“The Truth still lies in the X-Files.”