32 Years Later, Mulder's Best X-Files Line Is Still One Of The Greatest Quotes In Sci-Fi History

Image courtesy of Everett Collection Published Oct 19, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. Sign in to your ScreenRant account While both Mulder and Scully have plenty of iconic lines throughout The X-Files, there is only one quote that could ever define David Duchovny’s character. The scariest episodes of The X-Files prove that the show wasn't always concerned with FBI agents chasing aliens. There were all manner of villains in the series, some supernatural and some surprisingly grounded, so the image that viewers might have of Mulder and Scully searching for little grey Martians is far from the whole story. That said, there is a reason that this is what many viewers remember from the show and want to see in the upcoming Hulu reboot of The X-Files. One of the biggest innovations of The X-Files was the show’s ability to blend standalone monster-of-the-week episodes with a broader myth arc, fusing the episodic structure of standard police procedurals with a more ambitious, serialized storytelling style. From the show’s pilot episode, The X-Files made it clear that there really was a conspiracy hiding the truth from Mulder and Scully, and the true extent of this mystery wouldn’t be unveiled until the show reached its conclusion. The original run of The X-Files lasted nine seasons between 1993 and 2002, with the feature-length movie spinoff Fight the Future arriving after the season 2 finale. A two-season revival began in 2016 and ended in 2018, ten years after the second spinoff movie, 2008’s I Want to Believe. Mulder’s Iconic Season 1 Episode 24 Quote Still Encapsulates The Appeal of The X-Files Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb For many viewers, the ultimate answers provided to Mulder and Scully’s search for the truth were unsatisfying and incomplete. However, one could argue that this was part of the show’s point, as encapsulated by one iconic line from its star. In season 1, episode 24, “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” The Smoking Man lethally intercepts Deep Throat's attempts to deliver an alien fetus to Mulder and Scully, keeping the truth obscured from the agents and the public once again. The titular department is shut down after Mulder and Scully got too close to the truth, but Duchovny’s true believer refuses to give up despite this seemingly crushing, existential setback. He tells Scully, “I can’t give up. Not as long as the truth is out there,” a line that echoes the closing quote of the show’s iconic opening credits sequence. Thus, Mulder and Scully’s investigations start over, and so begins another 24 years of searching. While Hulu’s The X-Files spinoff will have a hard time replicating this, a major part of what made the original show so successful was how much the series refused to placate viewers with easy answers. The show’s paranoid conspiracy still hasn’t been revealed in its entirety to this day, even though every season of The X-Files offered viewers more and more clues to the truth. Almost None of The X-Files’ Imitators Could Replicate Its Paranoid Conspiracy Image via Everett Colleciton While The X-Files had almost innumerable imitators in the years that followed, few of the shows that came in its wake were able to replicate this genuinely obtuse paranoid atmosphere. Many shows overexplained the rules of their supernatural worlds, like Grimm, while others became lost in increasingly byzantine and complex paranormal storylines, like Supernatural. Others still, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, never attempted to mount an underlying myth arc, and instead centered their multi-season storylines on the character evolutions of their heroes. However, for shows that wanted to hint at a greater, all-encompassing truth underlying their mysterious story without giving everything away, The X-Files remains the most successful blueprint. Some shows attempted to explain everything in their endings but felt overly complex and convoluted, such as Lost. Others, like NBC’s time travel drama Journeyman, didn’t last long enough to fully sketch the stakes of their sci-fi stories. However, only The X-Files managed to build a complex, largely unseen conspiracy behind the scenes, then end the show without ever fully providing viewers with the all-important truth. Release Date 1993 - 2018-00-00 Network FOX Showrunner Chris Carter Cast David Duchovny Fox Mulder Directors Rob Bowman, David Nutter, R. W. Goodwin, Michael W. Watkins, Tony Wharmby, Daniel Sackheim, Michael Lange, Cliff Bole, David Duchovny, Jim Charleston, James Wong, Peter Markle, Rod Hardy, Thomas J. Wright, William A. Graham, Jerrold Freedman, Joe Napolitano, Kevin Hooks, Larry Shaw, Richard Compton, Tucker Gates, Allen Coulter, Barry K. Thomas, Brett Dowler Writers jeffrey bell, Frank Spotnitz, Howard Gordon, David Amann, Darin Morgan, Steven Maeda, Greg Walker, Chris Ruppenthal, Kim Newton, Paul Brown, Sara B. Cooper, Thomas Schnauz, Tim Minear, William Gibson, Jeff Vlaming, Charles Grant Craig, Chip Johannessen, Chris Brancato, Daniel Arkin, Gillian Anderson, Jessica Scott, Jim Guttridge, Kenneth Biller, Larry Barber Franchise(s) The X-Files Creator(s) Chris Carter