Although it comes at it from a decidedly skeptical perspective, faith — whether it be in UFOs, government conspiracies, or the Catholic Church — has always been a core element of The X-Files. Series creator Chris Carter describes himself as an observer, someone who’s “curious” about life’s greatest mysteries and the human response to them: “I'm actually fascinated by faith, and the intersection of science and faith in particular,” he tells Inverse. So perhaps it’s appropriate that Carter finished out his original run with a movie called I Want to Believe.
Released in 2008, The X-Files: I Want to Believe moves away from the mythology arc of the first X-Files movie into what’s essentially a supersized “monster of the week” episode, about a missing FBI agent and a cluster of Russian scientists performing unspeakable experiments in rural West Virginia. These are combined with subplots where Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) — now retired from the FBI and working as a doctor at a Catholic hospital — fights for a critically ill patient and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) tries to locate the missing agent with the help of a psychic named Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a Catholic priest and convicted pedophile.
