While fans have spent years debating whether David Duchovny’s Agent Mulder or Gillian Anderson’s Agent Scully was the true protagonist of The X-Files, the show’s creator had already settled this question years earlier with a convincing answer. Although the classic ABC murder mystery Twin Peaks paved the way for The X-Files thanks to the show’s unique blend of a police procedural format and supernatural plot elements, The X-Files in turn went on to become one of the most influential TV shows of its era.
The original run of The X-Files lasted nine seasons, with the 1998 feature film Fight the Future arriving in cinemas between seasons 5 and 6. The standalone 2008 sequel The X-Files: I Want to Believe was followed by a two-season revival in 2016, bringing the show’s lifetime episode total to 218. Throughout its time on TV, The X-Files influenced everything from The Outsider to Fringe, Evil, Lucifer, Supernatural, Grimm, and even horror shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
An essential part of the show’s appeal was the incredible chemistry between stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, whose mismatched FBI agents Mulder and Scully were always at odds about the nature of the cases they investigated. While Mulder believed in all manner of paranormal phenomena, Scully always strived to find a logical, rational, explanation for seemingly supernatural events. Since the show’s monsters were often genuine aliens, cryptids, shapeshifters, and occasionally even ghosts, it might seem like The X-Files sided with Mulder as its true hero.
The X-Files Creator Chris Carter Has Confirmed Dana Scully Is Its Protagonist
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However, in a 2015 interview at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, series creator Chris Carter explained that Scully is the true main character of the series. Per Carter: “It just made sense to me in an instinctive way, that she would be the scientist. I don’t know what that says about me, but I always saw it that way. It was always a man and a woman.. I’m interested in strong women characters. For me, Scully is the center of our show, she is the skeptic in all of us.”
Carter went on to explain that “Science is at the root of science fiction, so Mulder, while he seems to be often right, and it might seem to be his show, I always think of Scully as the grounding influence and the thing that keeps the solar system of the show in place.” This explanation gets at the heart of a quality missing from many of the imitators of The X-Files, namely the show’s delicate balance between skepticism and supernatural storytelling.
In many of the later shows listed above, such as Grimm and Lucifer, the existence of supernatural beings is baked into the show’s central conceit, so paranormal events are never in question. In others, like the Stephen King adaptation The Outsider, paranormal explanations seem so unlikely and unbelievable that it takes almost the entire show’s run for the main characters to acknowledge the reality that its antagonist might not be human.
In contrast, The X-Files struck a perfect balance between these two extremes. Since Mulder was a true believer, there would have been no central tension in the show’s premise if he were the protagonist. Thus, forcing Scully to face events and phenomena that changed her conception of reality gave The X-Files the conflict required to drive the story of the series.
Dana Scully Has Been Hugely Influential On Female Leads In 21st Century Television
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While there is a lot to love about Fox’s sci-fi procedural Fringe, the show’s handling of multiverses, parallel realities, and other elements of fringe science fell short in this regard. Like a lot of shows creatively indebted to The X-Files, Fringe lacked a protagonist who was rooted in the viewer’s own recognizable reality, so the show’s outlandish plots and wild twists never felt as impactful as they might have if the series started out from a more believable place.
Fringe‘s Olivia Dunham still owed a creative debt to Scully, but unlike Mulder’s partner, her skepticism was almost never proven right compared to the rantings of her male colleagues. Similarly, from the title characters of Bones and Veronica Mars all the way to Law & Order: SVU‘s iconic Olivia Benson, most of the best female cops on TV since the ’90s owe some inspiration to the skeptical, rational, and scientifically minded The X-Files heroine Agent Scully.
The X-Files
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