The BEST episodes of The X-Files
Every episode of The X-Files ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of The X-Files!
`The truth is out there,' and FBI agents Scully and Mulder seek it in this sci-fi phenomenon about their quest to explain the seemingly unexplainable. Their strange cases include UFO sightings, alien abductions and just about anything else paranormal.
#1 - Bad Blood
Season 5 - Episode 12 - Aired 2/22/1998
After Mulder chases down and kills a young man who he believes to be a vampire, the agents return to DC aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event. In the extremely humorous stories that follow we see how Scully and Mulder both perceive each other.
#2 - The Truth (2)
Season 9 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/19/2002
When an unexpected person comes to Mulder's rescue, Mulder refuses to slip north over the border to safety. Instead, he heads southwest to the Anasazi ruins of New Mexico seeking a mysterious wise man who the Indians call "The Keeper of the Truth".
#3 - Dreamland (1)
Season 6 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/29/1998
While being detained near the famed "Dreamland" Area 51, a strange craft flies overhead and Mulder swaps bodies with an Area 51 "Man-in-Black". While the other agent has fun in Mulder's body, Mulder himself finds it difficult to fit into someone else's life, especially a shadowy one. Mulder contacts Scully about the body swap and tries to get her the flight data recorder from the UFO test flight, but his alter ego uses Mulder's FBI persona to have him arrested.
#4 - Existence
Season 8 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/20/2001
Mulder, Doggett and Skinner attempt to fight off the alien replicants, and they find a connection to the conspiracy that leads into the FBI. Reyes and Scully head to a remote farm to safeguard the birth of Scully's child.
#5 - The Red and the Black
Season 5 - Episode 14 - Aired 3/8/1998
After the gathering at the abduction site where everyone is killed by the rebel bounty hunters, Cassandra Spender disappears and Mulder is blamed by her son, Jeffrey, who is an up-and-coming FBI agent. Meanwhile, the Syndicate is continuing their tests to create a vaccine for the Black Cancer and Marita Covarrubias becomes an unwilling test subject.
#6 - Small Potatoes
Season 4 - Episode 20 - Aired 4/20/1997
Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilized eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.
#7 - Anasazi
Season 2 - Episode 25 - Aired 5/19/1995
When Mulder obtains what could be the original and uncut MJ documents containing information about the government's knowledge of extraterrestrial life; his shadowy enemies step up their harassment of him, eventually leading to his apparent murder.
#8 - The Goldberg Variation
Season 7 - Episode 6 - Aired 12/12/1999
Mulder and Scully get caught in a real-life Rube Goldberg device when they meet Henry Weems, who just may be the luckiest man on Earth—except everyone around him doesn't seem to be that lucky.
#9 - Millennium
Season 7 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/28/1999
As the year 2000 draws closer, the agents are up against a man from the Millennium Group who believes that he can bring about the end of the world on the 31st of December if he resurrects four former members from the dead. To gain more insight into the group and its practices, Mulder and Scully enlist a criminal profiler to assist them in the investigation.
#10 - Ice
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/5/1993
When members of an Arctic research team mysteriously kill each other and themselves only days after drilling deeper into the ice than ever before, Mulder and Scully accompany a team of doctors and scientists to investigate. They discover an organism that infects living creatures and accelerates the hosts' feelings of anger and paranoia, and the agents' colleagues on the expedition begin to question their government knowledge.
#11 - Providence (2)
Season 9 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/10/2002
Scully is anxious to recover William from his kidnappers and takes matters into her own hands when the FBI's attempts to assist in the investigation are less than helpful. With the help of the Lone Gunmen, Scully discovers terrifying information about her child's captors, and is once again forced to confront the mystery regarding the sinister interest in her son.
#12 - Gethsemane
Season 4 - Episode 24 - Aired 5/18/1997
While investigating the discovery of a preserved alien body found in the mountains of Canada, Mulder is contacted by Michael Kritschgau. He tells Mulder about a government conspiracy to make people believe in aliens without question, and Mulder has been the prime target.
#13 - Without
Season 8 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/12/2000
As the search for Mulder intensifies in the Arizona desert, Gibson Praise leads Scully to believe that she is truly closer to her target. Kersh informs Doggett that he has been assigned as Mulder's successor on the X-Files.
#14 - Redux
Season 5 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/2/1997
Scully helps Mulder fake his own death in order for him to go undetected through the Department of Defence and find out the answers to his new questions about the government hoax concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, at a joint FBI/DOD inquiry, Scully's attempt to drive out the Conspiracy's informant is halted as her cancer takes a bad turn.
#15 - The Erlenmeyer Flask
Season 1 - Episode 24 - Aired 5/13/1994
When Deep Throat points out a news story about a fugitive who apparently drowned, Mulder and Scully cannot see what makes the case special but follow it up anyway. With Deep Throat's insistence, they discover evidence of a secret government project code-named Purity Control, which uses human test subjects and infects them with extraterrestrial DNA. However, the evidence and everyone who has seen it is quickly being eliminated.
#16 - Herrenvolk
Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/4/1996
Jeremiah Smith and Mulder are on the run from the alien bounty hunter, and Smith takes Mulder to a small farm tended to by identical sets of children, and all the girls are clones of his sister when she was still a child. Mulder prepares to take Jeremiah and one of the clones to see his mother in the hospital, but the bounty hunter catches up with them. Meanwhile, the Syndicate suspects that they have a traitor in their midst and plan a trap which results in X being executed by the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
#17 - Field Trip
Season 6 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/9/1999
When the bodies of a couple who have been missing for less than a week are discovered to have been reduced to bone, Mulder suggests that recent paranormal phenomena in the area may have caused the accelerated decomposition.
#18 - This is Not Happening
Season 8 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/25/2001
When Teresa Hoese (who Scully and Mulder met just before Mulder's abduction) is found in a desert after enduring alien testing, Doggett alerts Scully that this could have something to do with Mulder and his whereabouts. Skinner joins them and they travel to the hospital where Teresa is clinging to life by a thread—and Scully soon realizes this is exactly what's going on with Mulder.
#19 - Release
Season 9 - Episode 17 - Aired 5/5/2002
When an FBI cadet with amazing profiling skills approaches Doggett, Reyes, and Scully with a lead on a suspect in a series of recent murders, he claims the same killer is responsible for the death of Doggett's son. The agents find themselves wondering if his knowledge of the deaths is because of his obsession with the cases he has studied at Quantico, or if he is in some way involved in the murders.
#20 - Trust No 1
Season 9 - Episode 6 - Aired 1/6/2002
Scully is approached by a couple who claim their baby has the same abilities as William and have information about the super soldier program; however, they will only talk to Mulder, believing him the only person who can make the connections and uncover the truth. Scully is forced into an awkward situation when she has to decide whether to put Mulder's life in more danger even though she desperately wants to see him.
#21 - Redux II
Season 5 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/9/1997
The Cigarette-Smoking Man helps Mulder to obtain Scully's cure and also lets him see his real sister who doesn't turn out to be as happy to see Mulder as he would've liked. In return for this, the Cigarette-Smoking Man asks that Mulder quit the FBI and work for him in the Syndicate where he could have power and respect which Mulder turns down, deciding to stay on the side of justice. While Scully's cure appears to have worked, the Cigarette-Smoking Man faces his own enemies and disappears, presumed dead.
#22 - Triangle
Season 6 - Episode 3 - Aired 11/22/1998
Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has reappeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future, but evidence further suggests that it is he who is back in the past.
#23 - One Son
Season 6 - Episode 12 - Aired 2/14/1999
The Cigarette-Smoking Man reveals all the government secrets from the past 50 years in order for his son, Jeffery Spender, to join him in his work. Mulder learns that the final stage of the conspiracy will soon begin with the hybridization of the Syndicate members, and he must stop it from happening. Agent Spender deceives his father and arranges for Mulder and Scully to be reassigned to the X-Files, which doesn't sit too well with the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
#24 - Tempus Fugit
Season 4 - Episode 17 - Aired 3/16/1997
While celebrating Scully's 33rd birthday, a strange woman informs Mulder that NICAP member Max Fenig (see Fallen Angel) has recently died in a plane crash. After a visit to the crash site and finding Max's body with radiation burns on it, Mulder suggests that the plane was intercepted by a UFO and is rapidly being covered up by the military.
#25 - The Sixth Extinction
Season 7 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/7/1999
While Scully travels to Africa to piece together the meaning of the symbols on the spaceship beached on the Ivory Coast, Mulder is imprisoned by his own frenetic brain activity. He manages to get a message to Skinner who finds Kritschgau, and together they try to understand what is happening to Mulder before it is too late.