‘The X-Files’ reboot recap: ‘My Struggle’ opens with new revelations for Mulder and Scully

The highly anticipated return of “The X-Files,” starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, did not disappoint as it hit the small screen on Sunday in the US. The hit sci-fi show brought back the familiar goosebumps and thrill the fans felt the first time they watched the show in the ‘90s.

The show also brought back creator/director Chris Carter, as well as Mitch Pileggi and William B. Davis as Walter Skinner and The Smoking Man respectively. The revived series will only air for a six-episode arc, but, as fans hope, it may extend to more seasons and episodes.

Spoilers ahead for ‘X-Files’ episode ‘My Struggle’

The first episode, titled “My Struggle,” was full of Mulder and Scully uttering the show’s taglines, “The truth is out there” and “I believe.” It opened with a scene in 1947. A doctor was escorted to a military facility to the site of a crashed spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico. The doctor later found an alien crawling away from its ship. The soldiers then shot dead the already wounded alien.

Back to the present day, approximately 14 years after the closure of the X-Files office, Skinner, the assistant director of the FBI, called Scully on the phone. Scully, as it seemed, was the only one who had contact with Mulder, and she could barely get in touch with him as well. It turned out Skinner wanted them to meet an online news anchor named Tad O’Malley (guest star Joel McHale), who had alien conspiracy theories on major events.

O’Malley took them to a remote location in Virginia to meet a young woman named Sveta. Sveta reminded Mulder that he interviewed her when she was a little girl, just after her first alien abduction. She then showed them her navel, which was perforated with holes. She said she had broken memories of her foetuses being scooped out of her.

From Sveta’s observations, the viewers learnt that Mulder suffered from depression, which killed his relationship with Scully. Like her, Scully has alien DNA as well. Svetlana admitted later to Mulder that humans took her foetuses, not aliens. This prompted Mulder to caution Scully, saying they were misled all throughout their career, possibly by the government. He later on met with the doctor in the first scene, now a retired old man.

According to the doctor, the Roswell incident was a smokescreen for a government operation. Apparently, the aliens, concerned with the safety of mankind, ventured to Earth following the detonation of a hydrogen bomb in the ‘40s. A covert US government agency, supported and formed by world leaders, staged alien abductions and implanted alien tissues to unsuspecting humans like Sveta, and took and hid alien technology from the people.

They still didn’t know what the government’s goal was, but, as O’Malley theorised, it wanted the takeover of the country and the world by any means necessary.

Just as O’Malley said he would reveal the truth on his online show the next day, Scully dismissed their theories, saying they were creating fearmongering among people. She also claimed Sveta’s tests came back negative, meaning she did not have alien DNA. This proved out to be a lie, as she would admit to Mulder the next day that she, too, has alien DNA.

The next day, instead of siding with O’Malley as they had originally planned, Sveta told reporters that O’Malley paid her to lie and blame the government. Mulder went to Sveta’s house to confront her but she was nowhere to be found. Military men also stormed into and destroyed a facility where alien spaceship technology was recreated by a group of scientists. O’Malleys website was shut down as well. Sveta was afterwards seen killed by an alien spaceship as her car suddenly broke down.

The last scene revealed the Smoking Man as he said the X-Files has been reopened.

“The X-Files” will air in Australia on Jan. 31 on Ten Network.