Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

Season 10:

Season 11

Also here’s the X Files opening theme.

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Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

The X-Files returned for two revival seasons—Season 10 in 2016 and Season 11 in 2018. Season 10 is a short six-episode attempt to recapture the magic, while Season 11 expands to ten episodes and tries to tie up long-standing lore, character arcs, and throw in some modern commentary… all while veering wildly between genres and tones. If you ever wanted to see Fox Mulder wrestle with a were-lizard, do karaoke, fight drone tech, dodge cultists, confront alien conspiracies, and be a dad (sort of), buckle up.


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Character Rundown

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny): Still sarcastic, skeptical of authority, and chasing paranormal ghosts. This time, he’s also kind of burnt out and, in one episode, sings. No, really.

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson): The emotional center. A bit more jaded and psychic now, she has visions of apocalyptic futures and keeps worrying about their son.

Cancer Man (William B. Davis): Somehow survived getting blown up at the end of Season 9. Because of course he did. He’s more cryptic and controlling than ever.

Walter Skinner: Back and stuck between helping Mulder and Scully and obeying mysterious higher-ups. Gets his own weird PTSD backstory in Season 11.

Monica Reyes & Jeffrey Spender: Their returns are… brief and awkward.

William (the son): Barely appears but is a major focus. Everyone wants him, no one explains why well.



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Pacing / Episode Flow

Season 10: Super rocky. Only six episodes and feels like four of them are trying to reboot the alien conspiracy myth arc with very little explanation.

Season 11: Tonally all over the place. It’s like the writers picked four completely different shows and stapled them together. Vietnam flashbacks, techno-horror, teen horror, religious zealotry, and end-of-the-world conspiracies all crammed into ten episodes.


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Pros

Classic banter between Mulder and Scully still mostly works.

Some of the stand-alone episodes are memorable (“Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” is weird but funny).

There’s genuine tension in Season 10’s finale.

The tech episode in Season 11 has a decent moral and some absurd humor.

The show still tries to tap into real-world paranoia and fringe beliefs.



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Cons

The overarching myth arc is a mess. Vague conspiracies, recycled plotlines, and no satisfying answers.

Season 11 constantly jumps tone. One minute you’re watching Black Mirror Lite, the next you’re at a backwoods exorcism.

Mulder becomes the skeptic in the Were-Lizard episode. What?

The Mr. Chuckleteeth episode feels like an IT 2017 ripoff with tonal whiplash, melodrama, child death, and disturbing imagery.

Scully’s constant cryptic visions get tiresome.

Cancer Man’s return just raises more questions.



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Final Thoughts

The revival had potential, especially if it leaned into monster-of-the-week fun and left the tangled conspiracy lore to die in peace. Instead, we got recycled alien plots, awkward exposition dumps, and tone shifts that gave us whiplash. Season 10 was a rusty jumpstart. Season 11 had more episodes to find its footing… and mostly tripped over them.


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Rating

Season 10: 6/10

Season 11: 4/10

Combined: 7/10 (and that’s me being generous)

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Spoiler Warning Here comes the chaos…


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Spoilers

Season 10’s finale gets intense, with a virus threatening humanity and Mulder near death. Scully races to cure him… and William is the key to the cure. It ends on a cliffhanger.

Season 11 opens by retconning the entire Season 10 finale. Surprise! It was all a vision! Yup, the apocalypse was just a maybe. Cop-out of the decade.

Skinner nearly kills Cancer Man at the start of Season 11… until Cancer Man drops the reveal: he impregnated Scully with alien DNA and is actually William’s biological father.


> “What the Feckin’ heck is this bollocks?! And hold on a tick—why the feck am I speakin’ in an Irish accent?!”

Yes that’s how much that reveal broke me, I started speaking in an Irish accent for 10 seconds.

Tech Episode (“Rm9sbG93ZXJz”):

The tech turns on Mulder and Scully because they didn’t tip the AI sushi chef. No, seriously.

A funny moment: Fox asks his car to play Prince’s “Controversy.” The car plays “Teach Our Children the Way” instead. Fox laughs and says, “How did you get ‘Teach Our Children the Way’ from ‘Controversy’? They don’t even sound the same!”

The whole thing wraps up with them eating at a human-run diner and paying with cash. Message received: Be kind to your robot overlords—or tip them.


Mr. Chuckleteeth Episode (“Familiar”)

Honestly, it felt like the writers watched IT (2017) and said, “Yes. Do that. But make it PBS.” And the result is an episode that’s less X-Files and more Discount Derry With Extra Daycare Trauma. 🎈📺💀

Actor who plays the doofus cop in Monk plays a grieving father here.

Weird love triangle between cops, a lynching scene, witchcraft, and self-immolation.

Mr. Chuckleteeth looks like a warped public access nightmare version of a Teletubby—unsettling, with dead eyes and a plasticky face.

Trigger warning: children die in brutal ways.

Also let’s talk about what didn’t work in this episode. because wow, this one felt like a bootleg Stephen King fever dream in the middle of a government conspiracy show. Here’s what felt wildly off:

🧸 The Kids’ Show Worldbuilding Was Nonsense
We’re supposed to believe that there’s a show called The Bibble-Tiggles—which airs to toddlers—and features Mr. Chuckleteeth, a dead-eyed, elf-eared ventriloquist dummy with human teeth and the aura of a demonic Fisher-Price reject. No one questions this? Parents are fine with their 4-year-olds watching a character that looks like it eats souls?

🧠 It Tries to Be Deep, But Misses the Mark
The episode touches on themes like community hysteria and grief, but none of it lands. It’s too surface-level to be meaningful and too clumsy to be thought-provoking. It feels like a serious message duct-taped to a Scooby-Doo villain.

😵‍💫 Tonal Whiplash Everywhere
One minute we’re in murder mystery mode. The next, we’re watching nightmarish mascots twitch-dance in a forest. Then suddenly it’s about mob mentality, then maybe witchcraft, then… back to puppet horror? It’s like Goosebumps, The Crucible, and Five Nights at Freddy’s got blended into X-Files soup.

Like no seriously I can’t express it enough this episode feels like IT 2017 lite, it’d like the developers watched IT 2017-

Ohhhh wait a minute this season came out in 2018, ok yep that checks out. Makes sense now.

😬 Mr. Chuckleteeth Is Unintentionally Hilarious
That name alone sounds like an Adult Swim parody. And the show expects us to take him seriously? The dude walks like a busted animatronic from a condemned funhouse and somehow that’s the local mascot? It’s supposed to be creepy, but mostly I laughed out of discomfort.

👽 Mulder and Scully Feel Like Extras in Their Own Show
Worst of all? Our two leads barely contribute to the resolution. They feel like guests in a completely different horror series that just happens to be using their names. It’s filler disguised as fan service, and it’s painfully obvious.

Final Thoughts on this episode.

A Jumbled Mess of Tones 🧸🔪🔥

Let’s break down just how wildly off the rails this episode goes.

First, we’re dropped into what feels like IT (2017) Lite—creepy kids, nightmare mascots, and a grinning demon-thing called Mr. Chuckleteeth who looks like if Ronald McDonald and a porcelain doll had an evil baby. All right, unsettling enough.

But then suddenly we swerve into a mob lynching, complete with accusations, townsfolk rage, and people literally taking justice into their own hands. Okay… dark turn.

Wait! New twist—now it’s a cheating spouse melodrama! You know, because what would a haunted children’s mascot murder plot be without some soapy infidelity on the side?

And just when you think it can’t go anywhere else, surprise! It ends with a witch doing a full-blown satanic ritual in the woods.

Like… what are we doing here? What is this episode trying to be? It feels like they jammed four rejected horror scripts into one and said “Yeah, that’ll do.”

And through it all, Mulder and Scully are just kind of… around. Like paranormal spectators watching the community theater version of Hereditary.


Skinner’s PTSD Episode (“Kitten”)

A flashback-laced story of Skinner’s time in Vietnam.

Paranoia gas, government experiments, and another example of the show trying too hard to tie every weird event back to a secret conspiracy.


Religious Cult Episode (“Nothing Lasts Forever”)

Centered on insane religious cults and organ harvesting.

Tonally off for the X-Files. Feels more offensive and shock-for-shock’s sake.


Finale (“My Struggle IV”)

Concludes with yet another virus warning, William being hunted, and Cancer Man getting shot multiple times and dumped in a lake.

William survives a headshot, and resurfaces like Jason Voorhees at the end.

X-Files gets shut down (again).

Mulder and Scully hug at a dock. Roll credits.


This was not the ending we deserved. It was like watching the myth arc deflate like a leaky balloon.

May the truth rest… somewhere, I guess.