The X-Files: Closure (7.11)

Outside of Paper Hearts, I don't think I was ever hugely invested in the Samantha arc. Then again, I've felt more and more over the years of watching this show that it's been pretty easy to not get invested in The X-Files. Because Samantha's story was just one of the more obvious examples of the series letting a story run away from any kind of logic -- the character getting wrapped up in increasingly obscure mythology hijinks and sometimes losing sight of the overall simplicity of her disappearance in the first place. Closure, while not an episode I particularly enjoyed, does at least bring the story back to its origins: as a means to give Mulder the hope and drive that he needed to engage in the X-Files in the first place.

So Samantha wasn't killed by Ed Truelove, and she wasn't the victim of a UFO abduction. The whole 'CSM-guided experimentation' thing remains intact (I have no idea, though, if any of it actually makes sense anymore), but the big revelation here is that the walk-in's glimpsed last episode saved Samantha from further experiments, turned her into 'starlight' and sent her to some eternal playground with a bunch of other kids who would have experienced enormous pain and suffering if kept alive.

For me, this was all a little overly sentimental, the first and last scenes awash in corn with the drippy choir score and Chris Carter's hideously over-written monologues. But, not being entirely made of stone, I did see the emotion in Mulder's eventual epiphany. Then again, there is a whole lot of skepticism to the whole episode which could implicate that all of the starlight hoodoo is actually incorrect. Anthony Heald's always been great at playing these frantic, slightly nuts characters, and it's correct for the show to grant his psychic that element of ambiguity. Maybe the walk-in's are real? Or maybe it was a necessary means to an end to get Mulder to find that peace that he had always wanted. Maybe this was just a story that had no ending that could plausibly work at this time, and the writers just wanted to give him some sort of emotional freedom in the end?

Regardless of what's on-screen, Closure does bring exactly what it promises. It's not hugely satisfying, but I guess that's not what Chris Carter wanted. It's not us as an audience that are promised that closure, this is Mulder's story, and since Mulder is satisfied by the explanation he's given, maybe we should all pipe down with our questions. Like I said, I've never been hugely invested in all of this. C+

Credits
Guest stars William B. Davis (The Cigarette-Smoking Man); Mitch Pileggi (Walter Skinner); Anthony Heald (Harold Pillar); Stanley Anderson (Agent Lewis Schoniger); Rebecca Toolan (Teena Mulder)
Writers Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz Director Kim Manners