Redux (2)

"The Return" (eng. "Redux") and " Return II" (eng. "Redux II") – the first and second episodes of the fifth season of the X-Files. The episodes continue the plot that began in the last episode of the fourth season, and reveal the so-called "mythology of the series" set in the pilot series.

At the beginning of the first episode, Mulder is sitting at his home and receives a call from Krichgo that they are being bugged. Mulder breaks into the second floor of his home and kills an employee of the Ministry of Defense named Ostelhoff. He tells Scully what happened, and they decide to fake Mulder's suicide. In the morning, Scully identifies the body of the supposedly dead Mulder, found in his apartment. Meanwhile, Mulder himself, using Ostelhoff's pass, with the help of Krichgo, gets into the secret archives of the Ministry of Defense, where he finds an ampoule with a certain liquid in a folder with the name of Dana Catherine Scully on the cover.

In the second episode, Scully is taken to the hospital, after which Mulder appears, alive and unharmed. In response to the accusation of lying, Mulder says that a traitor in the FBI contributed to Scully's cancer, and he, Mulder, knows his name. Mulder offers to save Scully with a chip that was in the liquid found by Mulder in the last episode. Dana's family, after some protests, agrees to the move. At the same time, the Smoker offers Mulder a deal (though in exchange for working for the Smoker), which he refuses.

The smoker, having already given the microchip to Mulder in order for Scully to recover, realizes that this is not enough to gain the agent's trust. He brings Mulder's missing childhood sister, who believes the Smoker is her father. It turns out that she has been living her life for a long time, and she already has children; she did not know that their mother was alive, and when Mulder asked her to see her mother, she burst into tears and refused.

Mulder calls the chairman of the commission in the FBI a traitor, after which the Syndicate begins to clean up. A smoker is shot with a sniper rifle. His body disappears, but Skinner is sure that he died, as he lost too much blood. Skinner gives Mulder the photo he found on the Smoker's body: it shows Mulder and his sister before the kidnapping.

Scully is on the mend.

The last episode of the fourth season and the first two episodes of the fifth season show alien bodies that are supposedly the result of a hoax and created by genetic engineering. The aliens look like classic "gray" aliens: short, hairless bodies with large heads, huge black film-covered eyes, and a small mouth and nose. Their internal organs are similar to human ones, but there is a fibrous substance in the abdominal cavity that has no analogues in the human body.

The origin of these bodies is still not fully disclosed.