It left just enough hanging for a movie, movie of the week, mini-series event or even to redo the show in another five years.

I wasn't thrilled with it. Just the Mulder/Scully chemistry.

mikehunt - that would have made perfect sense. This is the government, what's wrong with you?

Duchovny got old in 2 years.

not the same young guy from dont tell mom the babysitters dead?

This ending was awful.

I know he wants to make movies, but at least Carter should have done some kind of CONCLUSION!

The trial, as a storytelling device, was entirely unoriginal and badly written. As part of the plot, it didn't make sense. Why an FBI/Military trial? Mulder no longer works for the government, so he's a civilian. Skinner was awful as Carter's explanation device. He may as well have sat smiling at the camera and saying "and remember when..." Also, the prosecution never offered any evidence that said Mulder did anything. They said they had a body, but never introduced it.

After the trial ended (an hour and twenty mins later), it got worse. They closed the X-Files. Wow. That's new. Nice to see Carter trying new ideas to let this show go out with a bang. Mulder escaping prison--had to be the most unexciting prison escape ever. And where did Kersh go? What happened to Skinner? And to have CSM be alive...why? He's dead, and bringing him back didn't do anything. He looked like the guy from Poltergeist 2. Mulder already knew the truth, so his character served no purpose other than to let fans say "Hey look, it's Cancer Man...hey look, there goes Cancer Man."

So now, since the 2 black helicopters returned from the movie, do they think Scully and Mulder are dead? Did they think they were inside when they blew it up? Are Reyes and Doggett reassigned? Mulder found religion because the Lone Gunmen ghosts watched him pee? He's seen ghosts before, he's seen every possible aspect of the paranormal, and now he finds religion? Way to ruin a great character. See, to me, the finale of a show should conclude it, even if there will be movies. Example: Star Trek: TNG.

The X-Finale was unoriginal, repetitive, and senseless. I watched from the beginning of the series, and that ending was more of a "kiss my butt" than a thank you.

BTW, I did enjoy Reyes smacking Kersh and others around with her final comments.

See, I thought it would have been better for Scully to make that speech--afterall, she's the one who gave up her baby and she needs to say why, it's more powerful. But that's reyes' biggest speech in the ep.

Everything but the trial parts was ok.
The ghosts of Muldars past was kind of interesting.
Like to have seen Deep Throat from the 1st season.

Have always prefered the Paranormal angle of the
x-files over the alien conspiracy. There were some
very cool creatures over the years. Flukeman has
always been my fav.

CSM with his true hatred towards Fox in the end.
And in the end CSM burned like he was going to hell.

Fox/Dana chemistry has always been the very best
of the series. In the end, thats all they had. Each other.

Just wished something more of finale after 9 years in
Fox's search for the truth. Sort of felt like he did in
the end.

That's it!!!!!! I finally hit it on the head for me. The finale was like a bad ep of TNG where they had to wrap up everything in eight minutes and it was usually lame.

David Duwhiney stole his paycheck on this one. I've never witnessed a more wooden, passion-less performance from him as Fox Mulder.

Me too. I think their characters are much more interesting now.

I meant from this *one* show, not from the show as a whole!

I watched the show and I appreciated that Carter wanted to answer all our questions. However, didn't they pretty much tell us everything already?

(except for what's the significant of Scully's alien/human baby)

So he played Mulder perfectly?

I guess like Mulder you just have to be careful what "truth" you go out looking for

Were you able to figure out the answer to your question from all the other posts?

This is pretty much how I felt. The only thing that we learned is the date. Why did learning the date mean that there is nothing that they can do?

I thought this was a fitting end for the show.

The episode was interesting, parts of it were very good, and parts of it were laughable (Mulder getting a note from a ghost, Gibson Praise not proving his any ability to read minds...). As I said, fitting.

I thought things came full circle nicely at the end. I don't think the show went on too long, as if you were going to end it for quality reasons it should have stopped after season 4 or 5. Seasons 8 and 9 were significantly better than season 6 and the plain awful season 7.

I like the comment from the poster who asked if Chris Carter had written the episode on the toilet. I couldn't have put it better myself. The episode deserves to be flushed.
It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode too...Dram and noneventful.
Carter did it again. He said that questions would be answered in the finale but hell, I thought they would be answers we didnt already know.
He tricked us again and damn him for it.

The truth is out there my ass.

I have to admit that I stopped watching when Doggett took Mulder's place pretty much.

The entire season finale gave hints that in the very last minute of the episode, some great, horrible truth was going to be told. What happened? Nothing. CSM never said what it was that Mulder was "afraid" to ("It's a scary story. Want to sit on my lap?"). Mulder was "too afraid" to tell this great truth that he had stumbled upon and in the last minutes of the series, The Christ card was played - making one think that possibly the truth had to do with a conspiracy involving religion. Possibly that Christianity/Judaism was a cover made to deceive. My brain clicked to CC wanting to say that Christian prophecy is a cover for the alien invasion - i.e. The Second Coming. Either Carter didn't have the balls to say this or he just didn't come up with anything in the end.

It's one or the other.

Selina

I guess it just implies a certain inevitability to it, like fate.

Unfortunately, I think that the problem is that there was no truth... no revelation to be found in the episode. All of the truths were rehashes of the past with the exception of the tie in to the date and it didn't even feel "fresh". At this point I've just about decided that those saying the X-Files should have ended years ago were right. It was never the same with the new players and even bringing back Fox didn't really give us a good conclusion beyond him and Scully finally hooking up.

The truth was the date of the alien invasion. this is the same invasion that has been discussedall along. it proved that nothing mulder and scully did changed anything. not what happened in the movie, not with jebediah smith (or whatever) not with the rebel aliens, not with the supersoldiers. That was the revelation. it wasn't particularly exciting but I guess it was big. it put an expiration date on the entire planet, which to mulder and scully was pretty dramatic. and the CSM did tell her.

They could have improved it with something like this:
Scully: "I can't believe we don;t have our stupid baby."
Mulder: "Even though we can never have him, due to our dangerous, crazy lives, we can keep fighting up until the last second so that we can rid the world of the oncoming alien invasion and he can grow up to live a happy, healthy life wherever he is."

OBviously the eording is a joke but the sentiment should have been expressed. It wasn't. Frankly, no baby would have been better but once he was introduced they should have dealth with him.