So we come to the 9th and final season of The X-Files, one of the greatest & most popular tv shows of all time – that lost it’s way due to various reasons during the last couple of seasons. It looked like most of the writing crew, the producers, Gillian Anderson & Chris Carter himself were losing interest and wanted to move on. Therefore the final season especially looks like a half-hearted attempt at times. Which is not fair on Robert Patrick and newest regular cast member Annabeth Gish- both of whom deserved much better. David Duchovny, the heart of the show, doesn’t show up until the final 2 episodes of the season. However creator Chris Carter believed that the show could continue for another ten years with new leads, and the opening credits were accordingly redesigned again.

After what happened during the season finale of season eight, Fox Mulder goes into hiding. Dana Scully is again re-assigned to the FBI Academy and Monica Reyes becomes John Doggett’s new FBI partner at the X-Files office. Dogget begins his investigation of Deputy Director Alvin Kersh (James Pickens Jr.) and search for Fox Mulder. Doggett asks Scully for help on a case involving an EPA official, Carl Wormus, who died after his car was forced off a bridge by a woman he picked up. Doggett and Walter Skinner travel to a reclamation plant, to find any links between Wormus’ work and death. After doing an illegal autopsy on Wormus, Alvin Kersh sends Brad Follmer (Cary Elwes) to locate Doggett. The investigation at the reclamation plant leads to an unknown woman, whose identity is later found to be Shannon McMahon (Lucy Lawless), one of Doggett’s former Marine associates. She reveals to Doggett that she is a “Super Soldier”. This leads them to a clandestine laboratory where a secret experiment is taking place on board on a naval ship. They later find connections with the experiments on the ship to Scully’s child, William. With Dana Scully reassigned to the Quantico Training Academy, Doggett and Reyes investigate their first X-File together – a series of satanic ritual murders.

A vicious murderer threatens Doggett and Reyes and then vanishes. Doggett is shot and Follmer discovers that Reyes’ gun was used. This episodes uses the concepts of alternative universes. Scully, Doggett and Reyes investigate when a teenager dies while performing a daredevil feat for a television show, but his death is soon revealed to be caused by a disturbing family secret. Scully is hopeful about reuniting with Mulder when a complete stranger offers new information about what drove him into hiding. Yet her trust in the stranger may place Mulder in even more danger. The tagline of this episode is “They’re Watching.” With no knowledge of his identity or his past, Doggett is found wandering a dusty Mexican town. While he struggles to piece together his memory, he finds himself embroiled in a smuggling plot. Across the border Scully and Reyes attempt to find him. Reyes takes the lead while investigating an X-File case surrounding a man found skinned alive. When she discovers that he had visions of a similar thing, she calls on Scully’s expertise to help with the investigation. When rubbings from the spaceship resurface, the FBI hides its investigation from the X-Files. Meanwhile, Scully is forced to take drastic measures when she discovers a threat to William. Distrustful of both Skinner and Follmer, Scully circumvents the FBI’s investigation into William’s kidnapping and performs her own, assisted by Reyes and The Lone Gunmen. Awakening in a surreal hospital – which a companion believes to be Death’s Waiting Room – after being hit by a car, a comatose Reyes struggles to wake herself up before her organ donor card is acted upon.

Doggett is determined to find an error in the DNA evidence that freed the convicted “Screwdriver Killer”, whom he nearly caught in the act 13 years earlier. In the race to catch a serial killer, Scully and Reyes find themselves relying on numerology, their powers of deduction, and a mysterious, card-playing stranger. Special agent Leyla Harrison takes Reyes and Doggett on a drive into the mountains after a woman stabs herself repeatedly and her widowed husband refuses to let anyone see their son. When Morris Fletcher approaches the agents with information related to the “Super Soldiers”, they turn to The Lone Gunmen. But the Gunmen are already knee-deep in a bio-terrorist’s plot which has links to the mysterious Yves Adele Harlow. Doggett finds a strange, disfigured man in the X-Files office and, on a whim of Scully’s, they test his DNA. The test reveals him to have the same pattern as Mulder. The disfigured man sticks a needle into William, which the other agents believe to be a virus of some kind, but is later revealed to be a cure for William’s powers. The unnamed man is later unveiled to be Jeffrey Spender (Chris Owens), Mulder’s half-brother.The surprising answers they find become even more surprising when William’s life is put on the line. When one of Scully’s students displays an inordinate ability to profile serial killers, his insights reopen the murder case of Doggett’s son, Luke. Doggett, Reyes, Scully and Skinner stumble on to a bizarre murder case where the main suspect is Oliver Martin, a man with an unusual obsession with The Brady Bunch.

Mulder returns from hiding to only be discovered looking for classified information at an army base and, after allegedly killing an apparently indestructible “Super Soldier”, he is placed on trial to defend the X-Files and himself. But with the help of Kersh, Scully, Reyes, Doggett, Spender, Marita Covarrubias (Laurie Holden) and Gibson Praise (Jeff Gulka), Mulder breaks out. Mulder and Scully travel to New Mexico to find an old “wise man”, who is later revealed to be the “Cigarette Smoking Man” (William B. Davis). The Smoking Man is later killed by commands from Knowle Rohrer (Adam Baldwin). The series concludes with Skinner attempting to contact Kersh who has been forced to close down the X-Files. Mulder and Scully travel to New Mexico where Black helicopters destroy an Anasazi cliff dwelling ruin along with the Cigarette Smoking Man. Doggett and Reyes are last seen driving off into the desert after aiding Mulder and Scully, who are now on the run from the FBI and are last seen together in a motel room facing an uncertain future.

The season is the most infuriating of the lot. The end of the series the characters basically blow up the Christian myth, creationism and all the Bible stuff – they prove that aliens were responsible for creating us. And yet Mulder & Scully smile at the end holding onto the last grasps of faith – a cross –  they speak to us as part of something greater than us—greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what’s speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves.” Nonsense. This show was great but it ended up feeling like a ruins of it’s past glory by mixing religious drivel into it. Good night to the X-Files!