Please let us know in the comments if we’ve missed anything! – Hospitalizing Agent Scully has been a standard go-to scenario for most mythology episodes of The X-Files and has been going on since season two. Mulder typically runs off on an emotional crusade of some sort in order to save her life, chasing members of the syndicate and confronting the Cigarette Smoking Man during the climax. So if “My Struggle III” feels more like a traditional X-Files than the previous two chapters in this arc, that’s part of the reason why. – Scully’s vision contains clips from “Existence,” “Nothing Important Happened Today,” “William,” and “Two Fathers/One Son” again. – To say that CSM’s big reveal at the end of this episode sheds a new light on the events of Season 7’s “En Ami” is an understatement. But if you rewatch it, certain lines of dialogue make a lot more sense than they used to – especially this one: Also, at the very end of “En Ami”, Scully confesses to Mulder about her adventure with CSM. This is how their interaction ends: SCULLY: Mulder, I looked into his eyes. I swear what he told me was true. In a sense, it was true. CSM wanted to leave a legacy, but not by finding a miracle cure as he told her he did. – The X-Files is about Point of View. Sometimes, the show had unreliable witnesses or narrators. Somewhere between various points of view is the truth. This was shown again by the new narrative in “My Struggle III.” Hence, the clever twist in the opening tag, “I Want To Believe” into “I Want To Lie.” The episode will remind long time viewers of several prior episodes from years past. The debate about mythology being ruined based on 2016 and the “retcon” argument is up for debate again. – One being the parallel universe idea from “Monday,” in regards to Scully, the idea that her premonitions in this episode via choices might have already altered impending future events. – Scully’s condition seems to be similar and the inverse of Mulder’s heightened brain condition from “Biogenesis” and “The Sixth Extinction I & II.” – The new warring factions of the Syndicate is fascinating, and this mirrors the warring factions of the Millennium Group from Chris Carter’s other series, Millennium (1996-1998). – Thanks to modern medicine, it appears Jeffrey Spender’s horribly disfigured face is as close to normal as possible. In “My Struggle III,” we see the former FBI agent pressured to give up the location of William. In season nine’s “William,” Spender, under the name Daniel Miller, Spender injected baby William with magnetite to curb the infant’s telekinetic powers before he was given up for adoption. – Scully mentions that the Lone Gunmen were killed by the Marburg virus. This wasn’t mentioned by name in the actual episode in question from season nine “Jump The Shark” and is instead a reference to Glen Morgan’s work on Chris Carter’s other series Millennium. At the end of that show’s second season, an outbreak of the Marburg virus in the northwest threatened to wipe out the earth’s population (much like CSM’s Spartan) yet mysteriously failed.
The X-Files Season 11 Episode 3: “Plus One”
– There are a few parallels to Carter’s other doppelganger episode “Fight Club” if you look closely enough. For instance, the post-credits exposition sequence that starts it off has the same farcical tone as its successor found at the beginning of “Plus One,” and even foretells one of its biggest themes. In it, Mulder and Scully discuss a strange case of a male and a female FBI agent who attacked each other without warning – and both bear a striking resemblance to our heroes. SCULLY: Seven years? MULDER: Yeah, but they are not romantically involved if that’s what you’re thinking. Later on in the episode, Scully even goes as far as to speculate that the doppelgangers they’re investigating have a “psychic connection”. What’s really interesting to think about is, why wouldn’t Mulder or Scully find a connection between these two doppelganger cases after having experienced the violent side effects that the first one caused? – Mulder and Scully’s cuddle scene echoes that found in “Requiem”, the seventh season finale which Carter also wrote. In it, Scully visits Mulder’s motel room in Oregon in the middle of the night to be held and express similar concerns about being a mother. This, in turn, was itself a reflection of their first night together in the same town in the pilot – which was also eventually mirrored at the very end of the ninth season finale, “The Truth,” penned by, you guessed it, Chris Carter.
The X-Files Season 11 Episode 6: “Kitten”
– This Skinner centric episode follows in such past episodes as “Zero Sum,” or “S.R. 819,” or Skinner’s past conversation to Mulder about his Vietnam experiences in “One Breath.” – Haley Joel Osment had starred in a number of features that stayed true to the spirit of The X-Files, namely “The Sixth Sense” and the Spielberg / Kubrick project “A.I.- Artificial Intelligence,” so the casting seemed apt and apparently Osment actively auditioned for the role to play Davey Jones. – The episode also featured another staple of Glen Morgan / James Wong tactics, the inclusion of a clip from The Six Million Dollar Man, a fitting touch since that series dealt with robotics, via cyborgs – The theme of the episode raises the question as to if Issac Ansimov’s three laws of robotics would even be relevant with today’s rapidly changing technology, and agendas.
The X-Files Season 11 Episode 9: “Nothing Lasts Forever”
– The use of the song “The Morning After” in such a ghoulish setting follows in the tradition of many James Wong directed episodes, or written episodes, going back as far as season one with “Behind The Sea.” – The episode follows in the tradition of other Vampire themed episodes, namely season two’s “3”, or the stolen organ subject of season three’s “Hell Money.” Or the more ghoulish medical sequences will remind fans of “Sanguinarium” or the second feature, “I Want To Believe.” Did you catch more X-Files easter eggs? Let us know in the comments and we’ll add them to the article!
