William, It Was Really Nothing.
By Matt Fowler
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Now that’s more like it.
Okay, not fully. But we’re getting there.
“Founder’s Mutation” was a marked improvement over Sunday’s premiere, though it still didn’t represent apex X-Files. Almost bogged down a bit by its on-the-nose tie in to Mulder and Scully’s son, William, and the guilt they both felt over giving him up (especially now that Scully knows that she’s got alien in her), this episode was oddly conspiracy-adjacent.
It was heavily billed as the second half of a two-night premiere, though it had little to do with the events of Night One, save for Mulder wanting to investigate a case he suspected may have ties to the Syndicate. And, in the end, that was a good thing. The further the revival can get away from the dreary formlessness of the premiere, the better. Though, ultimately, this chapter still wasn’t wholly satisfying.
What it did contain though was a return to investigative form, and a much more “at home” pairing for the two leads. Mulder and Scully were back on the beat, working a suspicious paranormal case involving a genetically tampered-with janitor trying to find his long lost experimented-on sister. Both children of Doug Savant’s reclusive, government sponsored Dr. Goldman (shown both normally and with old age make up). The janitor, Kyle, could telepathically communicate (aka “command via auditory torture”) and together with his sister, as we discovered at the end, could turn up the dial and assault people with vicious telekinesis.
Mulder theorized that all of Dr. Goldman’s work was related to the Syndicate’s old plan to recolonize the planet with a superior hybrid species of human, but we ultimately never actually found out what was going on. Goldman got his brains turned to mush and the siblings escaped.
So aside from the emotional reverberations felt by Mulder and Scully (the transition to Scully’s dream-life with William felt slightly jarring, though it helped sell Mulder’s somewhat sadder imaginings right at the end) there were no big answers here. Some good thrills, and a nice return to freak o’ the week form, but nothing huge.
The guest stars were fun. We briefly saw BSG’s Aaron Douglas, Chuck’s Vik Sahay (who had a fairly funny encounter with Mulder), Hannibal’s Kacey Rohl, and Falling Skies’ Ryan Robbins. Sure, it’s weird to see actors who’ve had much bigger and more notable roles on others shows come in for a few lines on The X-Files, but this revival absorbs all creatures big and small.
The two leads were looser here, though still game to play out the drama regarding their regret over giving up William. It also helped here that there was an actual case to investigate and familiar X-Files tropes to fall back on. Experiments. Cover ups. Mind powers. A wicked doctor getting punished for his cold, cruel take on eugenics.
Of course, Goldman dying (horribly) and the Wonder Twins escaping handed us a bit of a dead end here, but at least the guilty(er) party got his in the end.
