THE X-FILES season 10 may be over, but we Philes aren’t finished with discussing it — not by a long shot. In part four of our roundtable, we’re taking a look ahead.
It was the 90s. It was the early 2000s. Season-ending cliffhangers were to be expected when it came to THE X-FILES. Some arcs took three or four episodes, split across multiple seasons, to complete. The mythology played out like a series of films, split into one-hour chunks, and it was glorious. Fast forward. 2016. We ended a revival, with no guarantees for the future… on a cliffhanger.
Related: Reason part 1, part 2 & part 3 of our X-FILES roundtable
You can’t end it like that. What do we want to see in a possible season 11, what do we think will happen, and how do we think we will ever get it?
Luciana: I am still confused how Scully went from making a vaccine from her alien DNA to Mulder needing stem cells from William, but sure, I am going along with it. The science aspect of the show has always been mind-boggling to me, so I just take it at face value. I just hope that they treat this with care this time around, assuming we are getting a new season sometime in the near future.
After all Mulder and Scully have been through, they deserve a little happiness, and I can only imagine how seeing their child again would be the best present they could ever hope for. The situation is so complicated now, though. At this point, William is a teenager. Scully mentioned he was fifteen now, so that’s fourteen years that he has been living with his adoptive parents – assuming that’s where he stayed and nothing happened to his parents in the past decade and a half. So I can only imagine how hard this is going to be for all involved parties.
Scully would be overjoyed to see her son again, but to William, she is a stranger. And from the bad shape Mulder was in when we last saw him, I am assuming he doesn’t have much time either…So, how are they going to find William, convince him and his parents that they are, in fact, his biological parents and that they need to do a procedure to get stem cells from him in order to save his biological father’s life?
Is this only applying to Mulder’s case? Or is William going to be our Lord and Savior, along with his mom, who is also the savior of mankind, as we were led to believe? Are they going to make a vaccine with William’s stem cells, like Scully did with her own DNA? Is the fact that William was born as the perfect baby – a perfect prototype for the super soldiers – the one thing that will ultimately save them all? Did the magnetite Jeffrey injected him with have any effect at all on his abilities? Did it disappear over time? Does he have any special abilities now?
God, so many questions!
Also, we need more Skinner. We need more monster-of-the-week episodes. We need more episodes, period.
And last, but most definitely not least: Mr. Carter, please, just let Mulder and Scully be happy together, for God’s sake!
Meghan: There almost has to be a Season 11 with a cliffhanger that huge. If there’s one thing I can say for “My Struggle II,” the end did leave me insanely curious about what’s going to happen next. I wish they would leave William out of it, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I’d say that, come Season 11, we’re bound to finally get an appearance from the actual William, and that he’s going to become part of the mythology again.
Whatever happens with Season 11, one thing’s for sure: the pressure is going to be much, much greater for future episodes to be good. We’re just happy that Season 10 even exists, despite its many problems. Future seasons will have to step up their game. The foot’s in the door; now let’s open it wide.
What I want to see next season is Mulder and Scully actually sitting down and talking about things. I want to see them talk about Mulder’s absence during Season 9 when Scully had William. I want to hear them talk about their relationship. I want them to talk about Mulder’s depression. I want to hear these things discussed and explained. Too much of Season 10 seemed to be pulled out of nowhere, especially as far as Mulder and Scully were concerned. At the end of the day, THE X-FILES is, at its heart, just this crazily told love story with aliens in it. But it’s still a love story. And hopefully, it’s one in which its characters can find something resembling happiness. Eventually.
Lizzie: First of all, it’ll get done. I’m 100% sure of it. I’d say it will happen this time next year and probably for more than six episodes. I like the idea of 10 or 12, but I think it will all depend on David and Gillian. You can’t make the show without them, so you have to work around their schedules. (And pay Gillian what she deserves).
One thing seems clear: It would be easier to balance the MOW/conspiracy stuff with more episodes. With just six episodes, you run the risk of consecutive episodes having such a different tone that you might as well be watching two shows. Also, the success of this revival probably means that FOX will want more than six. I’m betting on 10, but I wouldn’t be surprised by 12.
I want William if/when this happens. I need William. At this point, they can’t not give me the kid. But most of all, I need my two favorite FBI agents to fix this whole breakup thing. I’m not sure they even remember WHY they broke up, other than because the show wanted to be edgy, or something along those lines. But THE X-FILES can and should work with these two together. It’s what we’ve been waiting for all these years.
So, in short, more MSR, less conspiracy, William and some closure. Or, the promise of more episodes. That’d be acceptable too. I wouldn’t say no to that.
Avi: I think that we’re in for some healthy waiting around again. But with how season 10 came to be, I wouldn’t be surprised that everyone, or most of the key players, would get together to make this happen again. I wouldn’t bet on having them back on our screens for winter 2017. I would think that a conservative prediction is that we won’t see them again until 2018, considering how booked Gillian Anderson is for the rest of the year…but you never know.
Shana: Season 11 is going to have to pick up where THE X-FILES left off, which is going to be pretty difficult if it takes another 12 years to get it. “Oh, hey. Why are Scully and Mulder so much older than they were just a minute ago? It must be the alieums.” I guess that’s one way we could explain everything away if it takes forever to get the leads back together for another season?
One immediate concern is obviously for Scully to cure Mulder. If the set-up with William is really going to go anywhere, he needs to be brought into the picture, briefed on the situation, and put into play — and fast. I have no idea how that can possibly work out in a way that does the storyline any justice whatsoever. That’s just the mess that we’re in, and William is just the only way to start to slowly dig the story out of the hole that it’s fallen into.
…buuut before we can even get to that, we have the added issue of that mysterious light from the sky to handle. Was that a real alien spaceship? Was it just another trick created by men? I swear to God, if either Scully or Mulder gets taken away by that thing, I’m going to break something. They’ve both been abducted. Let’s not go there again.
Once Mulder is cured, there’s the entire rest of the population needs saving, too. (Yes. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully first, then the rest of us. Fight me.) There’s no way Scully’s “cure” was enough to save everyone, and there’s no easy way to get it dispersed to the entire population, either. Who gets saved? How? When? We need answers, and we need them soon.
An eleventh season is going to have to handle all of these questions well enough that, should a twelfth never happen, people will have closure. But if, by some miracle, people want to continue doing this, there’s certainly a possibility of continuing to leave some avenues of storytelling open. See also: Andrew Marlowe’s final CASTLE episode, which could have been a beautiful series finale but created just enough questions in case of an eighth season. It would have been nice to have taken that kind of approach to this past season, but well…Here we are.
I’d like a season 11 that…addresses the relationship issues once and for all. Mulder and Scully can’t possibly keep nearly losing one another, only to be like “ok, that’s fine. We’ll just chill in our separate houses.” I don’t need them to live happily ever after; I just need them to live happily. There can be plenty of drama for them by the very nature of the work that they do, so they won’t be “boring.” You’d have to be truly incompetent — or the most talented failure of all time — to ever make these characters or their relationship boring.
I’d like a season 11 that…redeems Monica Reyes, once and for all. There was far, far too little explanation for why she took Emphysema Man’s deal. Reyes was a shining light in Scully’s life when everything else fell into the darkness. She was there when William was born, and she was one of maybe a handful of people who Scully willingly handed him over to for care, whereas she’d threatened to shoot nearly everyone else who even thought about laying a hand on him. Reyes was a good, honorable person, who wouldn’t just side with the devil to save her own skin. I’ve always called Reyes “FemmeMulder,” and she is exactly that. Much like Fox Mulder wouldn’t sell out just to save his own skin, neither would the female version of him. Reyes deserves better. Give her more. Fix it.
I’d like a season 11 that…has something more like 8-10 episodes to try to answer some of these questions without cramming too much into far too little time. I understand that schedules are going to be very difficult to navigate, and nobody’s signing on for a full 22-24 episodes. I’m fine with that. Six just didn’t work for setting this mess up and can’t work for cleaning it up, either.
I’d like a season 11 that…is planned for, not rushed. Since Duchovny and Anderson are obviously going to need time to figure out their schedules before doing anymore episodes (or films — I’d take a film) for THE X-FILES, which is going to take an unknown amount of time? There’s no reason why those creative juices can’t start flowing well in advance so that, when the time comes, the edits have been done and a strong story is ready to be told. There’s no reason to wait and then rush everything at the last minute because the time suddenly opens up. Figure it out, then worry about how to make it happen; and the result will probably be much more satisfying for all involved.