By the time The X-Files ended its initial nine-season run in 2002, the supernatural sci-fi procedural had largely run out of steam. Original stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were both absent for lengthy stretches of time, while the long-running “mythology” storylines had grown far too convoluted, with multiple overlapping explanations for the vast alien-invasion conspiracies that FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) investigated. The subsequent 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe didn’t offer much of an improvement, despite bringing back Duchovny and Anderson and focusing on a standalone story. So it’s not surprising that fans were skeptical about the 2016 series revival on Fox, even with both original stars and many longtime writers and producers onboard.
Ten years ago, the six-episode 10th season premiered with “My Struggle,” written and directed by X-Files creator Chris Carter, and picking up right where he left off with his ever-evolving mythology. It’s clearly meant to evoke the show’s glory days, reusing the same opening-credits sequence and revisiting one of the most famous UFO incidents of all time, the alleged 1947 crash of an alien vessel in Roswell, New Mexico. As X-Files mythology episodes go, “My Struggle” falls somewhere in the middle, but it confidently reorients the show for a new decade while retaining its essential elements.
