Sep-22-2000
Entertainment Weekly
APOCALYPSE HOW? An Update on the State of The X-Files’ Tangled Conspiracy
The biggest revelation about The X-Files’ labyrinthine “mythology” may be that there are so few revelations left. “People who think there are all these unanswered questions tend not to have seen all the shows,” says executive producer Frank Spotnitz. “If you really have paid attention, most of them have indeed been answered.” Nevertheless, we feel a preseason cram session with Spotnitz and creator Chris Carter is in order. — MF
What questions still remain?
Says Carter: “What the aliens are up to, what their ultimate purpose is, when they’re coming, and what they’re doing now that the conspiracy has broken down. What are their alliances? Is there any involvement with them by humans? Also, what is this other race of aliens [i.e., the renegades with the sewn-up eyes and mouths] up to, and what is their connection with the grays [the dominant alien faction]?”
Are we done with Mulder’s sister Samantha?
“I don’t think as long as Mulder is in the series that you can be truly done with her,” says Spotnitz. But, adds Carter, “I think it’s been pretty much resolved.” Based on last season, she’s in the spirit world now, being guarded by the “walk-ins” (the benevolent spirits who watch over the children who Mulder encounters in the woods in the episode Closure).
But her corporeal body is gone, yes?
“That’s right,” says Carter.
Could Cancer Man still be alive…?
Sure, he was reduced to puffing out of a blowhole in his neck and took a nasty tumble in the finale, but this *is* Cancer Man we’re talking about, and it *was* only a flight of stairs. “We didn’t, in fact, say he was dead,” notes Carter, though Spotnitz points out that actor William B. Davis is no longer officially with the cast: “In previous seasons when we’d killed him, he was always under contract.” Our advice: Don’t rule out a per diem return from the Morley Man.
When last we saw Krycek and Marita Covarrubias, they betrayed Cancer Man. Where will they go from there?
“They’re free agents now,” says Carter, “and they’re not necessarily best friends. [But] I think, depending upon what happens with Cigarette Smoking Man, they will become, in a way, the prime movers in the – maybe – reestablishment of a conspiracy. ” As such, according to Spotnitz, they promise to be a lot more exciting than the good ol’ boys of the bygone Syndicate. “It’s a sexier dynamic because these are young, attractive, vital, dangerous people. We expect to use that to the hilt.”
Gibson Praise, the young brainiac we met in Season 5, returns this year. What’s his story? “He actually has alien physiology, which means that he has something turned on in his brain. Mulder’s experiencing the same thing as a result of his exposure to the black oil,” says Carter, adding “we’ll find [Gibson] in a very unlikely place, but a place that ultimately makes sense. We’re going to explore him and how he came to be.”
And what of the alien’s colonization plan?
“I think we know it’s inevitable now,” says Carter. “The original conspiracy was trying to work with the aliens and at the same time deceive them, to buy time and create the vaccine so that they could be immune to it rather than be enslaved.”
If it’s inevitable, what is there for Scully, Mulder and Doggett to do?
“To get the word out,” says Carter.
So that everyone can just sit around and wait to die?
“Well,” Carter responds, “you’re envisioning Independence Day; I’m envisioning something different…”
Which is?
“I think you’ll have to wait…until season 16.”
Tags: chris carter, frank spotnitz, x-files