The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati

In the sixth-season finale "Biogenesis", FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate a rock inscribed with Navajo writing found in Côte d'Ivoire. While examining it in Washington, D.C., Mulder hears ringing sounds and suffers several headaches. He turns to Agent Diana Fowley (Mimi Rogers), his former love interest, for help before his mental health rapidly deteriorates and he is transferred to a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, Scully heads to New Mexico to ask a dying Albert Hosteen (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) to translate what is on the rock: he discovers that the item includes passages from the Bible, and a map of the human genome.[4]

In the seventh season premiere "The Sixth Extinction", Scully journeys to Côte d'Ivoire and discovers a wrecked alien spacecraft. After Scully examines the shards, she begins to believe that they hold the key to all of life's mysteries. Meanwhile, Mulder slips into a coma, and Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) enlists the help of former Department of Defense agent Michael Kritschgau (John Finn) to determine what is wrong with Mulder. The two discover that while Mulder's condition has made him unresponsive, it has given him telepathic powers. Scully, working in Africa, witnesses several strange events relating to the wreck before returning to Washington.[5]

Teena Mulder (Rebecca Toolan) and The Smoking Man (William B. Davis) visit Mulder, who is paralyzed in a hospital. After administering a drug that cures his paralysis, the Smoking Man reveals himself to be Mulder's father and takes him from the hospital. Meanwhile, Kritschgau visits Scully and claims that Mulder's contact with the spacecraft shard has reawakened the extraterrestrial black oil with which he was infected three years previously; because he is infected with the virus, Mulder is proof of alien life. Skinner, who has been looking for Mulder, tells Scully that Mulder's mother signed him out of the hospital. The Smoking Man takes Mulder to an unfamiliar neighborhood; inside a new home, he finds his former informant Deep Throat (Jerry Hardin). Deep Throat claims to have faked his own death to escape the burden he was under by being a part of the Syndicate, and he suggests that Mulder can now do the same. Mulder meets Fowley, and the two have sex.

On the hospital security tapes, Scully sees Mulder's mother talking to the Smoking Man but is unable to contact her. Scully receives a package containing a book on Native American beliefs, which describes how one man will prevent the impending apocalypse. Again visiting Kritschgau, she notices he has a stolen copy of her information on the alien spaceship. After he admits hacking her computer, she deletes the files from his laptop.

Mulder is reunited with his sister Samantha (Megan Leitch) in his new life. He marries Fowley and they have children. The years pass quickly; he grows older and Fowley dies. Mulder is revealed to be dreaming everything: in reality he is in a government facility being tended to by doctors while the Smoking Man and Fowley watch. The Smoking Man is preparing to have portions of Mulder's cranial tissue—which have been infected and activated because of the alien virus—implanted into himself. During the operation, the Smoking Man admits that he believes that Mulder has become an alien-human hybrid, and that by taking Mulder's genetic material he alone will survive the coming alien onslaught.

Mulder becomes an old man in his dream, accompanied by an unaging Smoking Man who tells him that Fowley, Deep Throat, Samantha and Scully have all died. The Smoking Man looks out the window, revealing an alien holocaust. Back in reality, Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea) kills Kritschgau, burns his papers, and steals his laptop. Scully, having earlier been visited by the spirit of Albert Hosteen who convinces her to pray, awakens in her apartment to discover that someone has slipped a security card under her door. Using it, she enters the facility where Mulder is being held. In Mulder's dream, Scully meets him at his bedside and convinces him to break with his imaginary life. In reality, Scully finds Mulder and the two escape the facility. A week later, Scully meets Mulder at his apartment and tells him that Fowley was found murdered. Mulder confides that, during his ordeal, Scully served as his "touchstone".[3]

"The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" was the second episode of the series written by David Duchovny.

"The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" was written by Duchovny and The X-Files' creator Chris Carter, making it Duchovny's second on-screen writing credit, after the sixth-season episode "The Unnatural".[6] He had previously co-developed the second-season finale "Anasazi" with Carter,[7] and had received a teleplay credit for the third-season episodes "Avatar"[8] and "Talitha Cumi".[9] Duchovny worked on his portion of the script while Carter wrote the season premiere, "The Sixth Extinction". Carter then added his remaining portions to Duchovny's script after finishing his work on the previous episode.[10] The tagline that appears in the opening credits for this episode is amor fati.[11][nb 1] This is a Latin phrase referring to the "love of fate",[12] which is an important concept in the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche.[11][13] In the context of the episode, the subtitle has been interpreted by writer Charlton McIlwain in his book When Death Goes Pop: Death, Media & the Remaking of Community as a reference to the love of a predestined life, in this case, Mulder's dream.[14] In her scholarly book chapter "The Last Temptation of Mulder", Amy Donaldson suggests the phrase means that Mulder must "love his suffering and passively accept it [and] actively embrace his journey ... and release his spirit to find new vigor."[15]

The term "Amor Fati" is an important concept in the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, related to his notion of the eternal return.

Mulder's dream and decisions in "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" are reminiscent of Jesus's actions in Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last Temptation of Christ. Duchovny, a fan of the book, found parallels between its central story and Mulder's ordeal and incorporated many of the novel's concepts into the episode.[16][17] In The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus is torn between his higher calling as the son of God and his desire towards his own humanity. Duchovny was drawn to the fact that Christ's struggle in the novel was "not only godlike, but also profoundly human"[18] and used this template for Mulder; in the series, Mulder is destined towards greater things—in this case, stopping the oncoming alien invasion—but he also desires to have a normal, human life. Duchovny noted: "Mulder is a guy who's been given the same problem [as Jesus]. What I'm doing is using the very human model of Christ".[18] Duchovny cautioned that he was not trying to make Mulder into a Christ-like savior figure but rather "an everyman".[18] Executive producer Frank Spotnitz described the concept as a risk, but Duchovny felt that this exploration of Mulder's character was necessary.[10]

Several of the lines in the episode proved difficult for both fans and cast members to embrace. Fans did not readily accept that The Smoking Man was Mulder's father. Davis, who portrayed The Smoking Man, noted that fans did not believe the revelation because "part of the mystique of it was that everybody had their own idea of what was going on."[19] The dialogue in the episode proved difficult for Anderson to present believably. She was troubled that her character was arguing against the existence of extraterrestrials, when in the previous episode her character had encountered an alien shipwreck. When she talked to Carter, she said that she did not "know if [she could] do this anymore" because her character was arguing against information that had been confirmed in the first two parts of the episode.[19] Carter explained that there must be conflict between Mulder and Scully for the show's "believer versus skeptic" dynamic to work properly.[19]

The portions of the episode about the alien shard and Mulder's telepathic abilities allude to the ancient astronaut theory, which proposes that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity or prehistory.[20] Spotnitz was surprised that the show received few complaints, even though the "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction"/"Amor Fati" story arc heavily suggested that aliens developed the notions of God and religion.[21] He praised the manner in which the show handled this subject, saying, "Often in the past, we've done stuff where I was sure we would get angry letters. But we rarely do. And the reason is because of the way we handle things. In 'Amor Fati' we treated the religious side [of the story] with respect."[21] Spotnitz later identified the combination of science and religion as "a conjunction of science and mysticism, of aliens and religion, that we're starting to develop. It's deliberate on our part, to help bring all the mythologies together into one story line."[17] The ancient astronaut themes were revisited in two season nine episodes: "Provenance" and "Providence".[22][23]

The episode is the last to feature Mimi Rogers.

"The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" features a number of actors and actresses who had not appeared on the show for two or three years, including Hardin as Deep Throat, Rebecca Toolan as Teena Mulder, and Megan Leitch as Samantha Mulder.[21] Hardin had last appeared in the fourth-season episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" during a flashback sequence, and Toolan's most recent role was in the second installment of the sixth-season episode "Dreamland".[24][25] Likewise, Leitch—who portrayed Samantha as an adult—had acted in the second part of the fifth-season opener "Redux".[26] Casting director Rick Millikan and the producers encountered difficulties when casting the boy whom Mulder meets on the beach in his dream. Originally, they cast the child of series producer Paul Rabwin's neighbor, but child labor laws dictated a limit on his daily working hours, so twin boys were cast to allow the scenes to be shot in a single day.[21]

"The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" is the series' last episode to feature Mimi Rogers as Agent Fowley. After reading a copy of the script, Rogers realized that her character was going to die before she reached the ending. The script included a large part for Fowley, which Rogers described as "by far the most [she] had to do in an episode."[27] She later explained, "It occurred to me [while I was reading the script], uh oh, this is way too good. I have too much to do. They're going to kill me."[27]

Davis was pleased with the episode, and he stated: "For me the episode was terrific to play because they ended up making the Cigarette Smoking Man somewhat tougher. We have seen so much softness in him; it was great to play that tough side."[21] With that said, he described the scene in which he was strapped to an operating table with Mulder as "totally uncomfortable",[21] later joking that "the only upside of that was that the author [Duchovny] was lying right beside me, feeling equally uncomfortable. I wonder if David would have written it that way if he had known what he would have to go through."[21]

The majority of the episode—like the rest of seasons six, seven, eight and nine—was filmed in Los Angeles, California.[28] The housing community in Mulder's dream was filmed in an "affluent section" between Malibu and Pacific Palisades.[29] The scene in which The Smoking Man opens a window, revealing an apocalyptic alien landscape, used a special set and a matte painting background.[21][30] Various special effects, such as explosions, were filmed separately, and the pieces were digitally composited to create the final scene.[30] A scene in which Mulder watched himself age was also filmed, but was cut for unknown reasons.[21]