Series synopsis
The X-Files is an American mystery sci-fi & fantasy crime television series that premiered on FOX on September 10, 1993. It ended on March 21, 2018. It was created by Chris Carter. It stars David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish.
The exploits of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who investigate X-Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder believes in the existence of aliens and the paranormal while Scully, a skeptic, is assigned to make scientific analyses of Mulder's discoveries that debunk Mulder's work and thus return him to mainstream cases.
Premise
The exploits of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who investigate X-Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder believes in the existence of aliens and the paranormal while Scully, a skeptic, is assigned to make scientific analyses of Mulder's discoveries that debunk Mulder's work and thus return him to mainstream cases.
Premise: The truth is out there.
Cast and characters
Leading cast
- David Duchovny as Fox Mulder
- Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully
- Robert Patrick as John Doggett
- Annabeth Gish as Monica Reyes
Guest cast
- Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner
- Bradley Whitford as Daniel Trepkos
- Doug Hutchison as Eugene Victor Tooms
- Dan Butler as Jim Ausbury
- Jayne Atkinson as Willa Ambrose
- Steve Railsback as Duane Barry
- Harriet Sansom Harris as Dr. Sally Kendrick / Eve 6
- Matthew Bennett as First Workman
- Carl Lumbly as Marcus Duff
- Raymond Cruz as Eladio Buente
- Peter Boyle as Clyde Bruckman
- Paul McCrane as Leonard Morris Betts
Episodes
This series spans 12 seasons with 340 episodes.
| Season | Episodes | First aired | Last aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 0 | 122 | September 18, 2018 | |
| Season 1 | 24 | September 10, 1993 | May 13, 1994 |
| Season 2 | 25 | September 16, 1994 | May 19, 1995 |
| Season 3 | 24 | September 22, 1995 | May 17, 1996 |
| Season 4 | 24 | October 4, 1996 | May 18, 1997 |
| Season 5 | 20 | November 2, 1997 | May 17, 1998 |
| Season 6 | 22 | November 8, 1998 | May 16, 1999 |
| Season 7 | 22 | November 7, 1999 | May 21, 2000 |
| Season 8 | 21 | November 5, 2000 | May 20, 2001 |
| Season 9 | 20 | November 11, 2001 | May 19, 2002 |
| Season 10 | 6 | January 24, 2016 | February 22, 2016 |
| Season 11 | 10 | January 3, 2018 | March 21, 2018 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to the series by Frank Spotnitz | |
| 2 |
Secrets of the X-Files This episode shows various clips from previous episodes (up to "Our Town"), explains the history of Mulder and Scully including how/before they met, then explains the other important characters (like Skinner, X, Deep Throat, CSM) and then summarizes/explains highlights (like Scully's abduction and the alien clones). |
May 19, 1996 |
| 3 |
More Secrets of the X-Files The episode shows the past highlights including Scully's abduction and Mulder's sister, and new ones from Season 3. There's a brief segment of clips from Season 3. |
March 25, 1996 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Pilot Agent Dana Scully is assigned to work with Agent Fox Mulder on the X-Files in an attempt to debunk his work on the paranormal. Their first case takes them to Oregon to investigate the unsolved murders of several high-school classmates. |
September 10, 1993 |
| 2 |
Deep Throat Mulder and Scully investigate the mysterious case of a military test pilot who disappeared after experiencing strange psychotic behavior. While on the case, Mulder meets a mysterious man who claims to have classified information about investigations into the paranormal. |
September 17, 1993 |
| 3 |
Squeeze Mulder and Scully search for a killer whose savage murder spree reoccurs every thirty years, where there appears to be no tangible method for the murderer's entrance and escape. |
September 24, 1993 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Little Green Men With the X-Files closed, Scully has been assigned as an instructor at the FBI Academy while Mulder is doing menial surveillance work. After meeting with Senator Matheson, one of his supporters in regards to the X-Files, Mulder disobeys orders and heads to an abandoned SETI site in Puerto Rico which has inexplicably reactivated itself and could provide proof of contact with extra-terrestrial life. |
September 16, 1994 |
| 2 |
The Host A.D. Skinner sends Mulder to investigate a body which washed into the New Jersey sewer from the ocean. Mulder believes that the basic blue-collar assignment is punishment, but by Skinner's own admission, what he discovers is a true X-File. |
September 23, 1994 |
| 3 |
Blood When several violent deaths in a small farming community are connected by the destruction of digital devices, Mulder believes that people are being driven to kill by the use of subliminal messages in the digital readouts. |
September 30, 1994 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
The Blessing Way (2) Scully finds her career with the FBI in jeopardy as Mulder is still missing and the Cigarette Smoking Man is pursuing the stolen files. The Navajo elders find Mulder's body in a cave and perform an ancient ceremony to call the spirit back to the empty vessel. |
September 22, 1995 |
| 2 |
Paper Clip (3) A.D. Skinner and Scully are at a standoff when Mulder bursts in and discovers that Skinner has the digital tape. Reunited, Mulder and Scully travel to a secret vault inside a mine and find an elaborate filing system of medical records which reveals that Mulder's sister may not have been the first choice for abduction. Meanwhile, Skinner deals with the Cigarette-Smoking Man for their safety. |
September 29, 1995 |
| 3 |
D.P.O. Mulder and Scully investigate a series of human and cattle deaths by lightning and are led to a teenage boy who is the only survivor out of five people recently hit by lightning strikes. |
October 6, 1995 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Herrenvolk (2) With his mother on a deathbed and the alien bounty hunter in pursuit, Mulder decides to put Jeremiah Smith, the alien healer, in mortal danger for a chance to finally uncover the whole truth behind the alien conspiracy. Meanwhile, the Syndicate suspects that they have a traitor in their midst and set up a trap. |
October 4, 1996 |
| 2 |
Home A baby is found buried alive in shallow ground and appears to have birth defects resulting from generations of inbreeding, leading Mulder and Scully to a reclusive family who have a history of inbred children. |
October 11, 1996 |
| 3 |
Teliko After several African-American men are killed and the color is drained from their skin, Mulder learns about the Teliko, an African folktale about a creature who must suck the pigmentation from a persons body in order to survive. |
October 18, 1996 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Redux (2) Scully helps Mulder fake his own death in order for him to go undetected through the Department of Defence and find out the answers to his new questions about the government hoax concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, at a joint FBI/DOD inquiry, Scully's attempt to drive out the Conspiracy's informant is halted as her cancer takes a bad turn. |
November 2, 1997 |
| 2 |
Redux II (3) The Cigarette-Smoking Man helps Mulder to obtain Scully's cure and also lets him see his real sister who doesn't turn out to be as happy to see Mulder as he would've liked. In return for this, the Cigarette-Smoking Man asks that Mulder quit the FBI and work for him in the Syndicate where he could have power and respect which Mulder turns down, deciding to stay on the side of justice. While Scully's cure appears to have worked, the Cigarette-Smoking Man faces his own enemies and disappears, presumed dead. |
November 9, 1997 |
| 3 |
Unusual Suspects Set in 1989, the story of the founding of The Lone Gunmen is finally told as we see how a straight-laced federal employee, a sex mad AV expert, and a nerdy computer hacker meet Susanne Modeski, a strange woman with evidence of a government conspiracy. When their plan to expose the conspiracy fails and Susanne is captured by a group of men-in-black, led by none other than X, they soon become a paranoid group of government watchdogs. |
November 16, 1997 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
The Beginning Mulder is less than thrilled when an Office of Professional Conduct board refuses to reassign him and Scully to The X-Files and even more so when he learns that Agent Spender and Agent Fowley have become their successors. When Gibson Praise reappears and comes to them for help, Mulder and Scully attempt to continue their quest undercover despite having fewer friends and less access and protection than ever before. |
November 8, 1998 |
| 2 |
Drive Mulder is trapped in a car with a man who has developed a serious ear condition which can only be suppressed by driving west at high speeds. As Scully tries to find the cause and a cure for the problem, Mulder and the man get closer and closer to the ocean. |
November 15, 1998 |
| 3 |
Triangle Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has reappeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future, but evidence further suggests that it is he who is back in the past. |
November 22, 1998 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
The Sixth Extinction (2) While Scully travels to Africa to piece together the meaning of the symbols on the spaceship beached on the Ivory Coast, Mulder is imprisoned by his own frenetic brain activity. He manages to get a message to Skinner who finds Kritschgau, and together they try to understand what is happening to Mulder before it is too late. |
November 7, 1999 |
| 2 |
The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati (3) Scully frantically searches for a way to help her ailing partner without having anyone to turn to for help, while a catatonic Mulder's dreams lead him away from his mission and the X-Files to a place which he believes is a better life. |
November 14, 1999 |
| 3 |
Hungry A monster who feeds on human brain matter tries to lead a normal life, but he soon cannot control his feelings of hunger. |
November 21, 1999 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Within (1) Newly appointed Deputy Director Kersh organizes a manhunt for Mulder and assigns Agent John Doggett to head the team. Scully and Skinner go along with the investigation but are warned by Kersh that they will be fired if anything is said about aliens. Scully, along with the Lone Gunmen, surmise that the Bounty Hunter is trying to erase all evidence of abductions, and they realize that he may be going after Gibson Praise, who is now living at a school in Arizona. Agent Doggett comes to the same conclusion and his team race Scully and Skinner to the school where they find Mulder trying to kidnap Gibson. |
November 5, 2000 |
| 2 |
Without (2) As the search for Mulder intensifies in the Arizona desert, Gibson Praise leads Scully to believe that she is truly closer to her target. Meanwhile, A.D. Kersh informs Agent Doggett that he has been assigned as Mulder's successor on the X-Files. |
November 12, 2000 |
| 3 |
Patience While tackling his first X-File case about a series of gruesome murders surrounding a bat-like creature, Doggett quickly learns that his investigative techniques are somewhat dissimilar to Scully's. |
November 19, 2000 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Nothing Important Happened Today (1) Agent Doggett investigates the death of an EPA official after his car is forced off a bridge by a woman he picked up. He asks for assistance on the case from Scully, who has returned to her teaching position at the FBI Academy in Quantico. |
November 11, 2001 |
| 2 |
Nothing Important Happened Today II (2) Doggett catches up with Shannon McMahon, the woman who the EPA official picked up. She claims to be a super soldier and that the people she has killed were poisoning the water supply, and she wants Doggett to expose the truth. |
November 18, 2001 |
| 3 |
Dæmonicus Doggett and Reyes investigate the murder of a couple in West Virginia that has all the signs of a satanic ritual killing. They link the murder to a doctor who is incarcerated in a mental institute, and Doggett becomes convinced that the doctor is orchestrating the crimes from within the hospital. |
December 2, 2001 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
My Struggle Agents Mulder and Scully return after 13 years to investigate a government conspiracy at the behest of a popular web-TV-show host, who introduces them to a woman who claims she's an alien abductee and shares startling news with them. |
January 24, 2016 |
| 2 |
Founder's Mutation When Mulder and Scully try to discover what unseen force may have driven a scientist to commit suicide, they turn up a laboratory where extreme genetic experimentation has bred subjects possessing dangerous powers. |
January 25, 2016 |
| 3 |
Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster Mulder and Scully investigate a dead body in the woods, and try to determine whether it was the work of a serial killer, an animal or a mysterious creature seen by eyewitnesses. Meanwhile, a disillusioned Mulder confronts some of his own demons. |
February 1, 2016 |
| Episode | Title | Air date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |
My Struggle III Mulder and Scully learn that they aren't the only ones desperately searching for their long-lost son, William. The very fate of the world may depend on it. |
January 3, 2018 |
| 2 |
This A chilling secret is revealed when an old friend reaches out to Mulder and Scully in a seemingly impossible way. |
January 10, 2018 |
| 3 |
Plus One Mulder and Scully investigate a case where people are plagued by their own doppelgangers. |
January 17, 2018 |
Production
Release
| Original network/platform | FOX |
|---|---|
| First aired | September 10, 1993 |
| Last aired | March 21, 2018 |
| Status | Ended |
| Schedule | Wednesday at 20:00:00 |