The X-Files Recap With Spoilers: My Struggle

As most fans know by now, the return of The X-Files opens with a one-minute recap of the previous series, ending with "Mulder's files" being burned.

From there, Mulder gives a short history of UFO lore in the U.S., culminating with a UFO crash.

In 1947, a military bus is transporting a man in a suit and hat and an army doctor; it stops in the middle of nowhere, and they exit to an alien crash site. The craft appears to be a different one than the one we just saw crash, since this one is heavily damaged, with big chunks of the "disc" on the UFO broken and exposed as opposed to just lodged in the ground, as the one that just crashed in the previous scene appeared to be.

In a hospital in the present day, Dana Scully is preparing for surgery when she gets a call that can't wait from Deputy Director of the FBI Walter Skinner. She, in turn, calls Fox Mulder, telling him that Skinner is looking for him, and that he's doing so on behalf of a wealthy conservative conspiracy theorist named Tad O'Malley.

O'Malley, she says, is desperate to meet with Mulder -- and he agrees, but only if Scully comes with him. When he arrives in DC, the two talk awkwardly, alluding to their recent breakup, when O'Malley pulls up and beckons them into his limo. He can't talk in the open, lest there be low-flying drones with listening devices.

The trio pile into his limo, and he says he requires their expertise. Mulder doubts O'Malley, saying that as a conservative media figure he seems likely to be in on alien conspiracy stuff for money and ratings -- but O'Malley impresses him with some UFO lore minutia and Mulder is won over.

O'Malley takes them to a house in a remote location, where he introduces them to a woman named Sveta. She suggested O'Malley reach out to Mulder, since he had interviewed her when she was a child, after her "first" abduction. She tells them that she's been abducted and impregnated numerous times, and that each time, the aliens come to take the fetus in utero. She says that she has alien DNA in her body, and Mulder suggests a skeptical Scully that she conduct a test.

1947, New Mexico: A group of soldiers spot an injured and scared-looking alien crawling away from the crash site and, over the objection of the Army doctor we'd previously seen in the bus, they shoot it.

While Scully is taking blood for the DNA tests, Sveta tells Scully that she's a little psychic. Scully is unconvinced, but Sveta puts on a convincing show by analyzing the problems with Scully and Mulder's relationship -- including that Mulder was depressed and that the pair had a child together.

Outside, a black helicopter arrives to take O'Malley and Mulder to another location. They arrive with a bag over Mulder's head, and a Japanese-American man shows him a hanger and an ARV -- an alien repica vehicle, created using stolen alien tech. He shows Mulder that it can run on "zero-point energy" with no emissions and no cost beyond developing the initial tech, and then demonstrates that it can simply vanish -- not turn invisible, but actually move by apparent teleportation.

1947, New Mexico: The Army doctor takes the body of the alien, over the objections of the man in the suit and some of the soldiers.

At her hospital, Scully is testing blood -- but her own, not Sveta's -- when O'Malley comes to check in on her, saying he "wanted to see her again." He's impressed by her day job work -- helping children with microtia (a condition where they're born without ears).

At that moment, Mulder is checking in on Sveta, telling her that he saw her hesitating during some of her answers and looking to O'Malley for prompts. She says that her story is true in substance, but that she believes it was a conspiracy of men, not aliens, who were stealing her alien-human hybrid babies. Mulder tells her that she can trust him, and calls Scully to tell her he's had a breakthrough. She has to have O'Malley pull the limo to the side of the road so she can talk to Mulder in privacy, and he says that he believes much of what they've been led to believe over the years is bogus, and that he knows why O'Malley came to them -- Sveta is the key.

Later, at FBI headquarters, Mulder heads to the basement office to find that the physical X-files are missing. He demands to know where they went, but Deputy Director Skinner tells him to watch himself. The two bicker a bit, but ultimately Skinner admits that there hasn't been a day since Mulder left that he hasn't wanted to call him back. The two agree that post-9/11, the government has been consolidating power in the name of security, and Mulder says that as a result, Americans have never been less safe. Skinner tells him to do something about it.

O'Malley, on his talk show, promotes Scully's microtia work. She's watching from the hospital, and has to close the computer when her test results come back. She's visibly alarmed by the results and asks the nurse to re-test.

At the National Mall, Mulder meets with an old man. Mulder spews out a whole long theory that centers on the government using appropriated alien tech to control people, saying that the man had always promised to confirm the truth for him if he could find it. The man tells him he isn't there yet, but that he's close -- all while having brief flashes of his own past as the Army doctor from the New Mexico flashbacks.

Scully goes to visit Mulder at home; she's worried that he's becoming obsessed and spiraling, but he says that he's figured out the truth and that now O'Malley can broadcast it. Scully, already frustrated, gets in her car to leave when she sees Sveta inside Mulder's house, but is stopped by O'Malley, who pulls up behind her and asks her to come in.

Once inside, Mulder and O'Malley double-team their theories: aliens were drawn to humanity once atomic testing started, and alien tech from crashes started being incorporated into the world via a powerful, global elite who will soon use it to overtake the US government and later the world. They want to broadcast all of it, including their suspicion that there is an impending global threat of a fake alien invasion being used to mislead people. Scully strongly objects, saying they don't have close to enough to support that, and that the panic it would inspire is dangerous bordering on treason. All of them are thrown for a loop when she reveals that her test indicates there's no alien DNA in Sveta.

At work the next day, Scully watches as O'Malley's show crumbles around him: Sveta has gone public saying that he was paying her to lie in order to gin up fear of an alien threat. Mulder is looking for her to no avail, while a group of soldiers storm the hangar where the ARV was, blowing up the vehicle and leaving the scientists on site for dead.

By the time Scully gets out of her next surgery, she checks O'Malley's site and it's been taken down altogether.

In the parking garage, Scully sees that someone has written "Don't give up" in the grime on her car window. Mulder arrives, and Scully says that they need to do anything they can to protect Sveta. She reveals that she re-tested Sveta's blood, and tested her own, and that both came back positive for alien DNA.

Just then, both Mulder and Scully get an emergency text from Skinner.

On the road, Sveta's car dies amid electrical problems. Overhead, either a UFO or an ARV hovers, showers her with light, and then blows up the car.

Elsewhere, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, now breathing (and smoking) through a hole in his throat, takes a phone call. They have a small problem: The X-Files have been reactivated.