The X-Files Recap With Spoilers: Babylon

The episode opens on a young Muslim man in prayer. After finishing and rolling up his prayer mat, [...]

By Russ Burlingame

x-files-02

The episode opens on a young Muslim man in prayer. After finishing and rolling up his prayer mat, he eats a sandwich and gets in his car. It's Southwest Texas, and while he's at a stoplight, ogling a pair of pretty jaywalkers, he's hassled by a redneck in a pickup truck.

When he arrives at his destination, he's met by a man outside of a motel, who greets him in Arabic. The pair ride together to a third location, where they recite a quick prayer and get out. Moments later, the building they've entered erupts into an explosion.

Later, at the FBI, Mulder and Scully examine cell phone footage that seems to show trumpet music coming from nowhere — or as Mulder says, "from the Heavens themselves."

Witnesses believe it's the end of the world, as in Revelation. As the pair are arguing about the validity of these sightings — or of the predictions of the Bible as a whole — somebody comes to their door.

To their surprise, it's a pair of young agents who look remarkably like they did 23 years or so ago when they first teamed up on the X-Files. He's Miller, a profiler obsessed with the paranormal, and she's Einstein, a medical doctor.

One of the Muslim men, who are now assumed to have bombed a building over an unflattering depiction of Mohammed, is braindead but still physically alive, and Miller hopes Mulder can help him communicate with the man — much to Einstein's chagrin.

Miller hopes to commune with the bomber so that he can gain insight into other potential sleeper cells in the area. Mulder tells him that he's unaware of anyone who might be able to give them supernatural help in communing with the near-dead.

At the airport, the two argue about The X-Files; here, they continue to echo early-seasons Scully and Mulder. Scully calls Miller, who excuses himself from Einstein. She tells him that she has an idea for how he might communicate with his terrorist, but she has to meet him in Texas. Meanwhile, Mulder calls Einstein and tells her the same thing — except that he needs her to delay her trip to Texas and stay behind. She leaves to meet Mulder.

Elsewhere, an Arabic man is working on bomb parts while listening to TV pundits scream at each other about the terror attack.

At Mulder's office, he starts a conversation with Einstein, who is almost immediately resistant.

At the airport in Texas, Miller greets Scully, who believes there's a scientific way to reach out to the bomber. She says she wishes she had thought of it when her mother was in her coma.

At Mulder's office, he suggests to Einstein that psilocybin mushrooms could help them commune with the terrorist. She rejects him, calling him a lunatic and telling him she's never coming back.

At the dying terrorist's bedside, Scully walks Miller through a way they might be able to communicate with the man. As they're preparing to start a test, two men identifying themselves as Homeland Security come in and start making threats and demands. When Einstein arrives, she's surprised to find Scully inside even after Miller chases off the Homeland Security guys by taking their photos and raising concerns that they aren't there for justice but retribution. Einstein calls Mulder to Texas, frustrated by the Miller/Scully relationship.

As he exits the airport, Einstein hands Mulder a mushroom, admitting that she's jealous and suggesting they go someplace where it's safe to take the drug.

In the dying man's room, a new FBI agent comes in, saying the hospital is under terror threat and they want to clear out the building. Miller and Scully are skeptical, and turn him away, saying they're going to keep trying to communicate with the terrorist. After they briefly leave the room, a nurse closes the door and turns off the man's breathing apparatus. As he starts to code, Mulder and Einstein enter the room and the nurse is forced to turn the machines back on.

As the nurse starts to rant about her hatred of Muslims and immigrants, Einstein takes her outside to talk while Mulder sits in a chair next to the body, a mushroom on his tongue.

By the time Einstein is done listening to the woman, Mulder has already left the room and is wandering the hospital halls, then the street outside, then a nightclub, in a drug-addled state. Ultimately, Mulder ends up dancing to an enthusiastic crowd at a country-western bar…at which point his fantasies start to get less and less plausible, with dancing girls, the Lone Gunmen, and finally what looks like an abduction scenario, where he's being whipped by Agent Einstein, dressed as a dominatrix. That fades to the Smoking Man whipping him, on board a boat rowed by hooded figures. The terror suspect is laying in the arms of a woman at the end of the boat, and Mulder walks to him, and listens to a whisper.

Elsewhere, a terrorist instructs a room full of men how to use their suicide-bomber vests.

In the hospital room, Scully walks Miller through the process of questioning the dying terrorist. She's starting to get responses, but they have to figure out a baseline for responses.

Mulder awakes in a hospital bed, where Skinner is at his bedside telling him he's fired. Einstein says she gave him a placebo last night and everything he experienced was in his head. Mulder tells them that the suspect talked to him, but he can't repeat it because it was in Arabic.

At the hospital, Einstein starts ranting at Mulder about how he's ruined her career, when Mulder gets ready to exit the hospital and runs into the woman who was holding the man's body in his vision. It's the man's mother, who is terrified when she sees him but goes on to talk to him anyway. She's sure he couldn't have killed anyone, and that he lost his nerve when he saw the eyes of innocence at the scene of the attack — that she'd seen it in her dreams. As they're talking to his mother, asking her for help in identifying the men who put him up to it, her son dies. Mulder tells the group that the dead man had spoken to him in his dream. Outside the hospital room, Mulder starts reciting the Arabic the man whispered in Mulder's dream. On his recommendation, a group of agents make their way to the Babylon Hotel, where a terrorist cell are in mid-prayer when the FBI storms their room and takes them into custody.

Later, an exhausted Miller and Einstein meet up at the airport. He says it was all Agent Mulder, and she says Miller is the one who kept the boy alive. The pair share a moment, talking in vagaries about their experiences.

At a country house, Mulder checks himself, finding two either bruises or hickeys on his upper chest/collar bone. He heads out onto a chair on the porch, where Scully pulls up in her SUV and asks him to talk to her. She asks him about his scheme. Scully is impressed by Einstein's move with the placebo, and the two muse on the nature of life, experience, love and hate. They hold hands and walk down the stairs together, talking about religion.

As they finish their conversation on a hopeful note, Mulder hears a trumpet sound — but Scully doesn't.

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