“You know, when I was a kid, I had this ritual. I’d close my eyes before I walked into my room because I thought that, one day, when I opened them, my sister would be there. Just lying in bed, like nothing ever happened. You know, I’m still walking into that room…every day of my life.” - Fox Mulder, The X-Files, 1x04, Conduit
i am absolutely obsessed with x files’ depiction of PTSD in agent mulder. i feel like most of the time, media depicts male characters with PTSD as angry, hypervigilant, distrusting & while mulder can be like this sometimes, when it comes to samantha, mulder is completely desperate and crumbles at the prospect of answers. closure. he is willing to believe things that we as the audience (and usually everyone else) can see are a trap.
we see this early on with—spoiler alert—clone samantha and continuing later to episodes like 4x10, Paper Hearts. this is another reason scully acts as a perfect partner and narrative foil for mulder—“mulder, it’s not samantha. it doesn’t match. but we will find her.” she brings him back to earth without invalidating his ideas because a lot of the time, he’s right. not only is he intelligent in general but also extremely intuitive—a trait very common in people with PTSD—but this level headedness and stability goes out the window when it comes to samantha.
i also believe that Paper Hearts as an episode is one of the best (at least my favorite) depictions of PTSD in any character i’ve seen. mulder repeatedly dreams of either “answers” or different versions of the night of samantha’s abduction, usually watching and unable to change it. it’s heartbreaking to watch. sleep, or lack thereof, is an important theme with mulder that we see time and time again—he doesn’t sleep when stressed. AND mulder becomes an emotional wreck with clouded judgement—he also hits roche, the prisoner, for taunting him (because he’s multifaceted, of course, he’s still angry especially when triggered) and removes him from custody despite being told not to…and ends up endangering a child and also the (rightful) death of a monster.
throughout the series he is quick to believe things are aliens, yes, but indirectly he is looking for answers as to what happened in anything he can. they carry all this throughout the show until samantha’s plotline is resolved (in one of the most anticlimactic ways, imo) which is impressive consistency for a tv show but they don’t make the trauma his WHOLE thing. yes, finding answers is the purpose of his work but he’s still competent and a good enough agent to (more or less) keep his place at the fbi despite being a liability and doing things like hitting his boss, disappearing, idk losing it every so often with little reprimanding.
it’s also interesting that they set this behavior up as a reaction to things to do with samantha but then when something happens to scully, he responds the same way but that’s another post.
idk. there’s a lot more. ptsd mulder you will always be famous to me. chris carter the insane writer that you are.
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