The Potential Problems
When Chris Carter opted to cancel the show towards the very end of season nine, he made a fateful decision: he not only reached out to David Duchovny to have him return for what would now be the series finale, but he also made Fox Mulder the center of its story (much to John Doggett’s detriment, as that character barely registers any screen time in the two-hour episode at all). The abrupt switch in focus from Doggett to Mulder, without preamble or explanation, is just one of many structural defects with the closing chapter, but it also inadvertently served as a preview of developments to come – The X-Files may have moved past Mulder as the driving force of its story, but Carter had not.
It was a decision that played out once again in the second feature, I Want to Believe, which mysteriously left both Doggett and his new partner on the X-Files, Monica Reyes (a series regular in the final season), completely out of the picture. Here, at the least, there was some story sense to justify the move: with the X-Files closed (for the third time in the show’s run) and all four former agents scattered to the four winds, Believe opted to focus on just Mulder and Scully, living as a couple on the lam, trying to move on with the next chapter of their lives. The eschewing of a great number of various plot threads or entire characters only served to further the personal, quiet nature of its story.
This newly-ordered miniseries doesn’t have such a convenient excuse, however. Although obviously no story details have been divulged as of yet, it seems clear that Fox is already looking at this to be a mini-season 10, just as the company treated 24: Live another Day as the ninth season of that series. As such, all the characters will need to be on the table, just as all the various story arcs will need to be addressed; arbitrarily replacing Picard with Kirk or magically resurrecting Ned, and pushing that magic reset button in the process, was never the responsible move to make in the first place, but now it will also be the untenable one.
Why would Carter so blatantly sabotage his baby, deliberately or not? The most likely explanation lies in the small fact that, once learning that Duchovny was off the show for good, Carter was inches away from not returning as showrunner for the ninth and final season – Mulder, as far as he’s concerned, is synonymous with The X-Files, and whatever new additions were made after the character’s tenure had ended were all illusory and otherwise frivolous.