Season 7 Irony and Requiem

While I have on occasion disparaged season 7 of The X-Files as one of its weaker seasons: the mythology essentially comes to a standstill, and David Duchovny seems less than enamored with remaining on the show. Moreover, the show gains a self-awareness of its own formula, and, with the imminent threat of colonization at bay and the Syndicate burned alive, the stakes are not as high, and Mulder's quest may at times even seem futile.

However, on closer inspection, the show still maintains 'signs & wonders' and 'chimera,' both episodes present near the beginning of the episode a clear 'villain'-- Enoch O'Connor, the pastor of the Signs and Wonders church and Jenny, the outcast in a Desperate Housewives-esque suburbia, whom the audience expects to be the perpetrator of the killings. However, in both cases, the perpetrator turns out to be the presumed 'good guy,' and Mulder figures this out not quite just in time: The 'good' pastor, Mackey, escapes so that he might wreak havoc on other congregations. The only reason Ellen stops her rampage of jealousy and doom is that she catches her reflection in the bathtub water (so it's a good thing that she was trying to drown Mulder), and, unlike a mirror, that reflection can't be broken. She is forced to acknowledge what she has become and stops trying to kill Mulder. Although Mulder makes both of these realizations, it is not in time to stop the 'bad guy,' and it is really only through coincidence that he himself is saved. in both cases the mistake and realization is distinctly on Mulder's shoulders.

These two episodes foreshadow "Requiem," the season 7 finale. People are being abducted: Mulder's, and the audience's, immediate thought is concern for Scully since she is a former abductee. however, this follows the irony of these other episodes, in that it is Mulder, not Scully who needs saving, and by the time Mulder realizes that he will be abducted it is too late to turn back. He seems to calmly accept this fate. Once again he understands the situation too late, but in this case he is not able to save himself, while in the other episodes circumstance allows his survival. This foreshadowing lends a sense of fatality to the episodes, highlighting the inevitability of Mulder's abduction as Mulder finally experiences that which he has sought for so long to validate.