my thoughts on x files 7x11: closure!
i've seen lots of opinions online about this episode, especially from those who watched the original run of the series, saying that they found 'closure' to be a really disappointing end to samantha mulder's story BUT
i seriously thought that was a beautiful way to end her arc. honestly i was a bit sick of the red herring clones of her being brought back with no real answers as to what happened to her, and so i think that this ending that mulder got in regards to his sister was almost perfect (at least in the way i interpret it, not that i think CC wrote it intentionally like this)
mulder gaining closure because of his realisation that closure does not exist??? as scully said at one point in the episode, mulder's emotional wound surrounding samantha's disappearance never healed. he never found an answer and his whole life's work had been spurred by his desperate need to discover what happened to his sister, with the distinct lack of answers being the true source of his frustration. he was set free from this torment not because he FOUND closure, but because he finally understood that closure was impossible for him to ever obtain.
i think that the obvious symbolism of this surrounding samantha's final disappearance (ie her physical death, and the lack of physical evidence that this resulted in) is quite simple, but also a really beautiful finish to her story. mulder's acceptance of samantha's fate in a way that—despite his obviously radical beliefs in terms of the paranormal—contradicts his atheism in terms of the more religious aspects of the show was really quiiite lovely to me, although again i don't think chris carter meant to do that. or maybe he did. idk. s7 is kinda all over the place
i don't think a big, groundbreaking finale for samantha's arc would've satisfied me like this did. the fact that it WASN'T some huge ending is a lot more realistic for me (despite the actual context of what happened of course) and mulder's understanding that she wasn't still out there and that she had, in fact, died many years beforehand was a good ending I'd say. like i dont know how else they could've done it especially with everything else that happened up til s7.
anyway the graveyard scene made me cry horrifically ahahahaha
I WILL SAY that the random psychic guy being there was insanely odd because what are u even doing but ANYWAY
she was never dead she was never alive she's not here she's not anywhere she has no physical body she cannot be buried or touched she has no name or records she exists in memory alone. she was not abducted by aliens but she was! she was. because the x files is about grief and she is grief, she’s loss personified, she's the undercurrent to the entire thing, the mechanism that makes it work, she's the reason for every x file & for the endless chase to put a name to the unnameable and take a photograph of death, she IS aliens. and she's a regular 8 year old who calls her brother names. many of you so called narrative haunters don't hold a candle to samantha mulder
right now my favorite angle on the x-files is that all the x-files are death masks for death itself. "solving" x-files, trying to understand and most importantly see and touch what can never be explained, is all just a lifelong reckoning with the inconceivable, which is to say death. clyde bruckman boiling every life down to how it ends, alfred fellig trying to capture death like a ghost, scully's illness, all underpinned by samantha's abduction as the defining hole at the center of mulder's life — and the challenge is to build some kind of life outside that grief, which he's literally made his job, and accept love anyway. I'm not saying this is an original thought, but rewatching it through that lens really hits. dying is perfectly natural but nature abhors normality
David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson behind the scenes of The X-Files
my first art of 2025 was butchfemme msr, I figured it'd be a good way to start this year too
a little addition on my patreon
also really obsessed with scully and masculinity the car convo with csm in en ami has me thinking about it. he’s correct that she’s drawn to powerful men but he’s not fully right that she “fears their power” I think it comes down more to her wanting to embody that kind of power. her blueprint for masculine authority was obviously her father and in that sense she’s been fascinated by it her whole life, it’s like that essay about how girls who are fans of rock stars don’t really just want to fuck Trent Reznor they want to BE Trent Reznor. makes u think about her pattern of fucking her professors and instructors and such. dana scully father to many including myself. and fox mulder
Fox Mulder. Quick digital painting.
“Characteristically Exuberant”
Scully, of all the adjectives to describe Mulder no one else has ever used “exuberant”. Girl, he’s excited to see you- and throw insane theories at his hot best friend. He just made you a slide show of 8 dead cows so he could stare at you in the dark; the signs are there.
LOOK AT THIS LOVERBOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
preserving the OP's tags:
The X-Files + Polaroids