Spoilers

“This is Not Happening”

“Deadalive”

These two episodes played as a two-parter that would lead to the return of Fox Mulder to the land of the living, literally.

Mulder was abducted by aliens at the end of the seventh season. David Duchovny had decided that he wanted to move on from The X-Files and a contract dispute with FOX resulted in Mulder being written out of the show.

However, everything was settled and Duchovny agreed to be in 11 episodes of season 8. These two episodes were the way they brought the character back from the abduction.

It was a rush of emotions as Mulder was missing, discovered dead, buried for three months before being exhumed and placed on life support. Eventually, the removal of life support is what brought Mulder back fully.

Does any of this make any sense? Not really. The story was all over the place, including the rebirth (?) of former X-Files character Billy Miles, who was abducted at the same time as Mulder was. How did Mulder survive being buried alive for three months? Or was he buried dead? No autopsy? No embalming? If you examine this plot too closely, there are a lot of nagging issues.

Having Duchovny back makes you happily ignore those problems. The final scene with Mulder and Scully was exceptional and worth the wait. Mulder joking about not knowing Scully was awesome and right in Mulder’s character.