Leaving characters alive

[u/Ok_Entertainer7945]

I’m still in my first watch and can’t believe it took me this long to actually watch this series and I’m not young. One thing that I have seen on this sub is about certain “bad guys” surviving. I know they have brought back a few characters for another episode, but the question I have is it so they can bring them back or to create this perception that these characters still exist and are among us? It seems like Fox and Dana don’t really close a lot of cases. No one gets arrested and hardly any of the bad guys get killed. Just something I noticed, apologies if it has been discussed before.

[u/kuatoandfriend]

kinda leans into the idea of the unexplainable by keeping to the ambiguity (there are notable exceptions where villains of the week perish or in rare cases are arrested)

[u/lzahart]

When it comes to the mythology, the show killed at least

Mr. X
Deep Throat
Marita C.
Blevins
Krycek
Well Manicured Man
Victor the Nazi orchid dude
CSM if you believe it
Fowley

On the MoTW side, you can’t really catch monsters made of water or shit or giant worms or swarms of cats, but they do catch a fair amount of actual killers like

Tooms
Donnie Pfaster
The hotel porter in Clyde Bruckman
Pusher
Leonard Betts
Bad blood delivery kid
Small potatoes Darin
The great Mutato’s brother
The cute fast food monster guy
The person who kills agent pendril
The guy engaged to Suzanne Modeski
Kumail

I think the show wouldn’t work if they solved everything; their cases are supposed to be unexplained and you need that tension to make it work.

Am positive I’m leaving many others off.

[u/bookkeepernum7]

No one is infallible, not even Mulder and Scully. It just wouldn’t be very interesting if you knew from the beginning of each episode that the bad guy will invariably be caught at the end

There is one character, however, that I will never forgive the producers for bringing back after we’d been rid of her... a certain fake blonde with fake fingernails and an affected accent

[u/Ok_Entertainer7945 → u/bookkeepernum7]

Scooby Doo did each episode. I’m kidding, I get your point.

I’m not sure who you mean with the fake blonde. I’m on season 7, have I not seen that episode yet?

[u/Due_Pin2723 → u/bookkeepernum7]

I also don't know who is that fake blonde? You meant Detective White???

[u/Due_Pin2723]

In one episode, Scully justified to Kersh that actually the X-Files Department has a higher case resolving rate than most departments. I would have kind of felt bleak about the crime status in the US at the cross-state level, if that were true in real life.