Mulder and Scully Go Back To Where It Started
"Requiem" Plot Summary:
In Bellefleur, Oregon, Sheriff Miles rushes to find a downed aircraft. On the scene, Deputy Ray Hausey does not answer his call. Miles' clock runs backward, and he slams into the other police car as fire burns in the distance. Getting out of his damaged vehicle, Miles spots the deputy, whose eyes appear to have been eaten away. There is green acid on the ground. Behind Sheriff Miles stands a duplicate of Hausey, who bleeds the same green fluid.
An FBI auditor looks at Mulder and Scully's expense reports, telling Mulder their motel room prices alone are way out of control. Mulder suggests that he and Scully could start sharing rooms. The bureaucrat asks about investigations of aliens - not questioning their existence so much as wondering why Mulder still bothers, now that he's concluded his sister is dead and the conspiracy is finished. When it's Scully's turn, the auditor is cynical about human-alien hybrid experiments, but she insists that there was once a conspiracy, that she was subjected to medical tests which gave her cancer and left her barren, and that she's seen things she cannot deny. The auditor wants to know why they can't do more research on the internet, narrowing their search for aliens to wherever the aliens actually are: "It's just a matter of reducing your vision."
Marita Covarrubias walks into a jail and announces that the prisoners will be released. Krycek smiles at her behind bars, saying he thought he'd left her for dead the last time he saw her. Covarrubias notes that if it was up to her, she'd leave him to rot, but the Smoking Man wants to see them and he's dying. At the Watergate Apartments in Washington, CSM greets Covarrubias and Krycek from a wheelchair, smoking through a tracheotomy opening as he tells them of the crash in Oregon. "We have a singular opportunity," he notes, saying he wants to rebuild.
In Bellefleur, two kids ignore the sheriff's warning that there's no evidence of a UFO involved in the plane crash. They go into the woods with a Geiger counter. One of them hits a spot where space warps around him, and begins to shake violently. Then he vanishes. The other kid reads radiation through the trees, but before he can investigate further, his flashlight begins to glow red-hot and the geiger counter goes berserk. He flees.
In the same town, Billy Miles telephones Mulder, asking if the agent remembers him from seven years earlier. Mulder and Scully indeed remember and want to know whether he's experiencing alien abduction again. Billy says it's happening again, but not to him. He falls silent when he realizes his father is in the room. Mulder smiles at Scully, who asks how they can possibly justify the expense; then she says, "Let's go waste money."
Mulder greets Billy and is surprised to discover that the boy who was once possessed by aliens has now become a policeman. Billy says his father fudged his psych qualifications, yet he doesn't believe Billy Miles or anyone else was ever taken. His dad is refusing to help find the UFO alleged to have hit the Navy plane, even though it's in his jurisdiction. Mulder says that if they find the craft, his father won't be able to deny the truth.
Arriving home, the sheriff says he talked to the FAA, who say the crash looks like just that - not a collision. The group drives to a site where Mulder marked an X on the road seven years earlier when they investigated the alien abductions that affected Billy. Mulder finds evidence of acid in the skid marks. Meanwhile Sheriff Miles orders his son away from the scene and into the car, hiding from him the fact that he has Ray Hausey's dead body in his trunk.
When they visit the missing deputy's wife, Mulder is surprised to find that it's Theresa Nemmin, whom they met years earlier when she came to them from protection from aliens. She invites them in and asks Scully to hold her baby while she gets her husband's medical records. Like herself, he was an abductee - he kept it secret. That night, as Mulder flips through Hausey's frightening medical dossier, Scully knocks on his door looking ill. She has chills, so Mulder wraps her in his blanket, then lies down himself and puts his arms around her. "It's not worth it, Scully," he says. "Go home." He tells her that looking at her holding the baby, knowing what has been taken away from her, made him decide that the auditor is right: their personal costs are too high. "There's so much more you need to do with your life." He strokes her hair, kisses her cheek. She weeps.
Krycek complains to Cancer Man that he's having no luck finding the ship, but CSM is pleased to learn Mulder and Scully are on the scene, and advises Krycek to follow their lead looking for the missing deputy. When Covarrubias asks the older man why he's toying with Krycek, CSM says he has confidence in Krycek's ability to find the UFO but not in his loyalty: he might sell the information if he found it himself. To possess that ship is to possess the answer to all things, says CSM with a strange glow in his eyes. "To God?" asks Covarrubias. "There's no god, Marita," he smiles. What she calls God is merely something alien with an intelligence far greater than theirs. And it's coming back.
Theresa opens the door to the man she believes is her missing husband, then realizes it's an impostor. When she stabs him, he bleeds green acid that eats at her eyes. Then he abducts her while the baby lies screaming in its crib. In the morning, Billy reports on the abduction while Mulder identifies an acid stain on the rug as the biological toxin emitted by what they believe may be aliens.
Scully becomes dizzy again. Out front, Mulder follows the boy from the woods, learning from him that his friend disappeared near the supposed alien crash site - and that Billy's father knows it. In the woods, Mulder finds the blackened flashlight while Scully wanders to another spot. Space warps around her, and she begins to shake violently, like the vanished teen. Moments later, however, she is lying on the ground, dizzy and disoriented. Mulder realizes the abductees are not being systematically taken this time, but there's an unknown pattern.
Billy storms home, pulls his gun, and confronts the man who looks like his father. "I don’t know who you are, but you are not going to take me," he announces, demanding to know why his own father would disbelieve him about the abductions. "I believe you, I just want it all to go away," the older man says heavily, taking Billy's gun from him. The son sits down heavily and weeps. Then the father morphs into the shapeshifting alien bounty hunter who has killed numerous humans over the years. By the time Mulder and Scully reach the front door, calling for Billy, there's no one there to answer.
Two days later at FBI HQ, Skinner visits a sarcastic Mulder, who calls his boss Walter and wants to know if he's going to be fired for going to Oregon. Skinner turns to reveal Krycek and Covarrubias. Mulder tries to attack the younger man, but Skinner insists that he listen. Covarrubias reveals that since Cancer Man is dying, his last wish is to rebuild the project centering on the alien conspiracy. Krycek confirms Mulder's belief that a ship went down in the woods in Oregon, cloaked in an energy field. The alien bounty hunter is eliminating all evidence of their tests on humans by taking abductees, but Mulder can get proof. Mulder asks Krycek why him, why now, and Krycek admits that as much as Mulder hates him, that's how much Krycek hates CSM - he wants him damned.
The agents meet with the Lone Gunmen, who have used sophisticated imaging to track the UFO. Covarrubias warns that the ship is rebuilding itself and they need to get to it quickly. Scully leaves the room, and Mulder follows, asking her to forget about what they're discussing inside. He says he won't let her go back to Oregon since the aliens seem to be specifically targeting abductees. "I'm not going to risk losing you," he says, and she embraces him. But she refuses to let him go back alone, so Mulder takes Skinner with him to the woods. While they look for the alien vessel, Scully reads data on the missing abductees and realizes that they all experienced the condition from which Mulder suffered earlier in the year - the condition that temporarily gave him remote-seeing abilities. She guesses that the invisible ship's force field knocked her out in the woods because it didn't want her, but it will want Mulder. Then she passes out.
Mulder follows the lasers he has set up to a dark spot where the ship warps their beams. While Skinner is distracted taking notes, Mulder scans the area, then puts his hand into the force field, where it shakes violently. Moments later Skinner realizes Mulder has disappeared. Yet Mulder is right there, just inside the force field, looking into the crowd of abductees standing in a circle of light. He joins them, accepting their welcome. As he looks up at the light above, the bounty hunting alien arrives and glares. Outside, Skinner sees the ship take off.
Krycek and Covarrubias enter CSM's apartment. He tells them they failed, and suggests that Krycek never meant to succeed. "As you do to Mulder and to me, you do to all mankind, Alex," warns Cancer Man, but Krycek doesn't buy it. He pushes the old man's wheelchair down a flight of stairs. As Krycek and Covarrubias leave, Cancer Man lies dead on the floor...but, then, he's been dead before.
Skinner visits Scully in the hospital, where doctors are running some tests on her. He's at loss for words, and she's crying, which makes Skinner cry too. The A.D. admits that he lost Mulder, but swears that he will not deny what he saw that night in the woods. Scully promises that they will find her partner: "I have to." As Skinner turns to go, she stops him. "Sir, um...there's something else I need to tell you. Something that I need for you to keep to yourself. I'm having a hard time explaining it. Or believing it. I'm pregnant."
Analysis:
I will write a long article next week analyzing this episode, and the entire seventh season, and all the rumors about what might happen next year. But right now, let's just consider the probable paternity of Scully's baby.
1) Of course, it could be Mulder's. This is the most appealing choice, even if it means they made love after her Buddhist experience or after going Hollywood or after Caddyshack or Steel Magnolias AND WE DIDN'T EVEN GET TO SEE IT! Teases. We'd need some mumbo-jumbo explanation of how she conceived given her medically guaranteed sterility, but hey...that's happened to people I know personally.
2) It could be Cancer Man's spawn. We have no idea what weird things he did to Scully while she was unconscious in that hotel in "En Ami." Maybe he slipped her some sort of time-release sperm capsule. Since he knew he was dying, and since he killed his son and his daughter's been dead for years, CSM might have decided to leave some progeny behind. Or he might have arranged with his alien friends to have her impregnated on his behalf. Icky, but possible.
3) I don't think it's likely considering she still calls him "Sir," but the baby could have been fathered by Scully's immediate superior. The Skin-Man took major risks in the past to get her cancer treated, and recently worked on a film that claimed she was in love with him. We don't know what Scully did for Associate Producer Walter Skinner to ensure that she got a less humiliating role than Mulder.
4) Or the baby could have been fathered by the evil alien bounty hunting shapeshifter, in a human form or as alien space goo, before he went up with Mulder and the rest. His kind had something to do with making Scully sterile and with creating Emily. Surely they could make her fertile again.
5) Eddie Van Blundht. Disguised as any man Scully's ever been attracted to. We don't know that he's still in jail. He's less subtle than Mulder, but Mulder's been remarkably unsubtle of late anyway. Eddie could appear to be just about anyone...with a tail...and his potency is indeniable. Similarly, the imprisoned sperm donor from "Fight Club" who fathered all those grouchy not-quite-twins may be the angriest man in the world, but no one could ever doubt his abiliy to get women pregnant.
6) Since we just met Daniel Waterston, Scully's former lover, I think we have to consider that their hospital reunion might have gone a little too far. It would certainly explain his sudden heart attack. All the osculation, chest massage, and bouncing up and down could be explained to the nurses as CPR...
7) The baby could be the Second Coming of the Lord. That would fit in nicely with Scully's Catholic background, and with Clyde Bruckman's prediction that Scully will never die. Her mother will be ecstatic.
8) Or the baby could be Callisto reincarnating. No wait...that was Xena's virgin birth.
9) My personal choice for the father would be Jeff Bridges from Starman. This one is just too, too obvious - childless woman has encounter with alien, loses lover but comes away pregnant!
10) Or in the sort of postmodern twist of which we all know The X-Files is capable...Chris Carter's the father of Scully's baby. I won't mind. I'm just pleased to know he's been reading fan fiction all these years.
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