6x18. “Milagro” - X-Files Rewatch
Lots of analysis below. So much to unpack with this episode. An EXTREMELY significant episode for Scully related to her feelings about and relationship with Mulder. This analysis goes into more depth in general, rather than a stream-of-consciousness observational post like my others tend to be.
Also, fanfic! I have a post-ep that I’d love y’all to check out that I wrote a while back in attempt to explain what happened with Scully in-between Milagro and The Unnatural.
Bated Breath (AO3), rated G, 2198 words M/S UST, Post-episode (Milagro) Mulder drives Scully home from the hospital.
Onwards for analysis and speculation.
The soundtrack for this episode is amazing. Love the beating heart that Mark Snow incorporated.
At the beginning, the symbolism of Padgett removing his own heart. It reflects the emptiness of his heart, his incapability of having love, but the burning passion he believes he is capable of, with which he pursues Scully.
At Padgett’s stare, Scully is creeped out, but she is also curious. That someone would look at her so boldly and with such obvious lust, when she’s tried to think of herself as separate from such things for so long.
Padgett wills things to happen, using his writing as a tool, a FOCUS, to channel his powers. He manifests things - the psychic surgeon (representing Padgett’s dark side), the lightbulbs not working, etcetera. He uses his creepy stalker insight to profile how people will act, then writes about it, but he can’t alter emotions, only manifest what is already there. (If he could make people think and do whatever he wanted, he wouldn’t have given up so easily when he recognized Scully’s love for Mulder.)
Mulder and Scully sitting close on his couch.
Padgett suggests that Scully sticks to science and facts because otherwise she’d be viewed as weak and soft. Perhaps this is partly true for other people, but NOT for Mulder. Padgett doesn’t know her history, what she’s afraid of, the real reason she’s kept herself from believing for so long. However, Scully IS influenced by Padgett here - she stands up for herself (makes herself tough instead of soft) when Mulder makes her schedule for her and goes off to do her own investigation.
The burning heart tale that Padgett tells Scully: “Christ came to Margaret Mary his heart so inflamed with love that it was no longer able to contain its burning flames of charity. Margaret Mary... so filled with divine love herself, asked the Lord to take her heart... and so he did placing it alongside his until it burned with the flames of his passion. Then he restored it to Margaret Mary sealing her wound with the touch of his blessed hand.”
He wants to reenact this story with her, not realizing that her heart already belongs to another.
As Padgett tells Scully intimate details of her life it makes her incredibly uncomfortable. She’s an intensely private person, only lets in a few people. But here is some stranger who seems to KNOW her. How did she not know she was being watched? What other things does he know? It would bother her from a professional point of view as well as a personal one.
That someone thinks of her this way - a purely physical attraction rather than something cerebral and mutually respectful like she has with Mulder - it unsettles her. But his influence makes her more aware of her desires, the feelings she’s walled away for so long and hasn’t let herself acknowledge.
The conversation between Mulder and Scully in the autopsy bay is very interesting. Scully is VERY OPEN about what just happened between her and Padgett, something that is pretty unusual for her. She admits to being frightened, she tells him that this creepy guy knows “too much information and intimate detail”, and then openly challenges Mulder to do something about it. Scully KNOWS what Mulder will do.
Mulder’s uncomfortable almost-smile when she tells him. How fucking real is that. I don’t know about you guys but I find myself smiling at the most inappropriate circumstances, so this hits home for me. (Thank you DD.)
Mulder and Padgett try to intimidate each other in the elevator. Don’t fucking mess with Scully! Mulder’s brooding walk down the hallway. 🔥 🔥 🔥
The love scene. Padgett writes what he wants to be true. He can influence the thoughts of others but cannot control them like Modell - only an encouragement in a particular direction, a manifestation of emotions already present. Scully’s disgust and fear is tempered by her curiosity of the strange and mysterious neighbour, which is why she ends up at his apartment. Padgett misinterprets her intellectual interest as romantic in nature.
“Loneliness is a choice.”
The implication: she can choose, at any time, to NOT be lonely. That she knows she’s lonely. What’s holding her back? This season was SHIT for Mulder and Scully’s relationship, but an undercurrent for her throughout the years she’s been his partner - fear. She’s scared to take that last step, to have him know all of her. For fear of death, of losing him. Being alone is safe.
Padgett talking to her like she’s an object, something to serve his writing rather than someone with a CHOICE. Another thing that reveals the emptiness of his heart.
The fantasy that Padgett has about Scully is meant to happen after she enters his apartment. The mugs in the fantasy are the same ones they drink coffee from, and in the fantasy they are still steaming hot. The lamp doesn’t light because it is off in the dream (another example of his ability to affect the physical but not the emotional).
I love the symbolism of Scully looking out the window in Padgett’s bedroom. She’d see something similar out of Mulder’s apartment, just slightly different. But enough to make a difference. She feels desire, she has love in her heart, but only for Mulder. Padgett can never be a replacement, no matter how many words he writes.
Padgett believes they are headed to the bed, to the love scene he described in his writing. I don’t think it would happen even if Mulder hadn’t interrupted them. Regardless, Mulder is a wild card - he didn’t account for him to burst through the door, didn’t write about him, so Mulder can act independently, outside of the story.
Mulder’s jealousy at seeing Scully there with Padgett. He’s tense, tearing through his pages, heedless of the destruction he’s causing, handles Padgett roughly. Mulder manifests his frustration as aggression, and this time it’s extremely personal. From now on the interactions that Mulder has with Padgett are filled with tension. You can see that Mulder just wants to fucking MESS with this guy. Part jealousy, part protectiveness.
Padgett’s assertion that the characters choose the writers. Does he believe that Scully chose him? That the psychic surgeon isn’t merely a manifestation of the evil and emptiness in his own heart?
In the jail cell, Mulder moves forward to intimidate Padgett but Scully’s touch instantly pulls him back. This is Padgett’s first glimpse at the connection between Scully and Mulder. Up until now he’s only been observing Scully by herself, and listening to them talk in Mulder’s apartment. Now, though, he realizes in their FIRST INTERACTION in front of him, that she is in love with him. All the things that he’s seen regarding Scully’s interest in him have been misinterpretations.
Mulder confronts Scully in the hallway about her part in the book. Just a note that Padgett watches their interaction here as well, confirming his initial thoughts about Scully’s love for Mulder. I think he’d also realize Mulder loves her back, but in Padgett’s mind, who wouldn’t?
“You know you're in here, don't you?” - Mulder “I read a chapter. What does he say?” - Scully “Well, let's just say it ends with you doing the naked pretzel with "the stranger" on a bed in an unfurnished fourth floor apartment. (pause) I'm assuming that's a priori, too?” - Mulder “I think you know me better than that, Mulder.” - Scully
Mulder’s look while biting his bottom lip. Scully’s licking her lips here, too. Hnnng. 🔥 🔥 🔥
After realizing Scully can’t love him, Padgett writes this: “Grief squeezed at her eggshell heart like it might break into a thousand pieces its contents running like broken promises into the hollow places his love used to fill.”
A parallel to how Padgett is feeling himself. Or “thinks” its how he should feel, if he had a heart.
Mulder and Scully standing close at the graveyard. Scully touches his back when getting him to back off from the suspect.
Their argument - taking opposite sides.
Scully is compelled to feel less negative about Padgett, and doesn’t feel he is capable of murder, he’s just strange and mysterious. Also, she wants to believe that it’s just an innocent attraction. (Please PLEASE let someone normal be attracted to her for once!)
AGENT SCULLY IS ALREADY IN LOVE. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Padgett is looking DIRECTLY at Mulder when he says this. Afterwards, Mulder takes a quick look at Scully, who has a very vulnerable expression on her face and does NOT look at him.
Padgett’s statement makes Scully’s feelings REAL - they are something that EXISTS in the world. She can no longer deny it, push it away. Also, the fact that Mulder is RIGHT THERE, that he KNOWS, too.
Things can’t go back to normal, especially after the ending of the episode. I don’t think Scully wants them to. I think she chooses not to be lonely.
Padgett starts writing and talking to Naciamento/his dark self. His subconscious knows what story needs to be told. He needs to steal Scully’s heart to place it next to his, to have her in death if he can’t have her in life. This is the ending that only makes sense for this story - he wrote it to have her fall in love with him, for them to be together, but now it’s impossible.
Padgett’s comment that Scully has been “trying to get his attention”. Through her interest in Padgett? This is possibly a misinterpretation, but it also might be something she’d do, though subconsciously. In my headcanon, Scully’s been trying to get Mulder’s attention for fucking YEARS, so perhaps he is correct. She wants Mulder to see her as someone with needs and desires, not just his partner.
They sit closely on Mulder’s couch for the surveillance.
The difference between Scully on Padgett’s bed, and Scully on Mulder’s couch (bed). At Padgett’s, she’s sitting up straight, very uncomfortable, like she could leap up and aim her gun at his head if he tried anything strange. At Mulder’s side, she falls asleep because she’s so trusting and comfortable with him.
Padgett wants to prove he can love, so he uses whatever power he possesses to sacrifice himself and heal Scully. From the burning heart story: “he restored it to Margaret Mary sealing her wound with the touch of his blessed hand.”
Destroying the book and thus destroying his dark self isn’t enough. Scully is already hurt, bleeding everywhere. He also needs to heal Scully, and does this through his sacrifice. This is the reason I believe that Padgett’s powers come through himself, he doesn’t really need his typewriter or even a physical copy of his stories to manifest them, he just uses them as a crutch. Perhaps it was how he developed his powers - his insight into human nature through his writing.
When Mulder hears the gunshots, he rushes back to Scully. It’s interesting to think that Mulder nearly cost Scully her life. Her bullets may not have killed Naciamento, but they summoned Mulder, enabling Padgett to burn the book, sacrifice himself and thus save Scully. In essence, she saved herself despite Mulder’s innocent interference.
“A chance to give what he could not receive.”
Instead of killing her, Padgett decides to give her the gift of life and love. He knows she loves another, that her heart is full of love unlike his own empty heart.
Scully’s breakdown.
She was about to die. It was the closest she’s come and in the most horrifying manner. Death is her greatest fear.
Being faced with something obviously supernatural (shooting Naciamento to no effect, being wounded then miraculously healed) would also make her confused and vulnerable - not being able to explain what happened and put it in a box.
The emotions she’s been trying desperately to repress have been brought to the surface this entire episode.
More speculation/final thoughts:
This season has dealt with Scully’s fears quite a bit, but mostly with her inability to accept paranormal/unexplainable phenomena. She also holds another fear - death. And it’s consequence? She’s afraid to let people in, let them close. After her remission, she tried to take the chance - to let Mulder closer, to give her heart to Emily. When she’s burned by taking these chances, she buries her feelings again. She’s too scared to take another chance, and the tension between them lately has not been conducive to any sort of positive change in their relationship. The emotions brought to the surface in this episode come bursting forth at the end. Scully doesn’t try to hide them. She lets Mulder see her whole heart, her whole self - fears and all.
Through sharing her entire self with him, Scully’s changed. She can’t go back to pretending and hiding. Her fear about dying, about getting too close, doesn’t matter. I think that Scully’s lightness in the preceding episode (“The Unnatural”) shows how far she’s come.
She reveals her vulnerabilities to Mulder, her softness; his embrace of her as she lets her walls down is cathartic and freeing. Scully knows what she wants, and now her love is “out there”, a tangible thing that they are BOTH aware of. No more second-guessing, misinterpretations.
Later in season 7 (“all things”), when Scully has her breakthrough about her beliefs, she has a similar cathartic experience (her vision in the Buddhist temple). In this episode, her breakthrough is emotional and related to her feelings about Mulder instead of intellectual/spiritual and deeply personal.
I think this episode is where I diverge from much of the fandom in terms of its significance to the MSR and Scully. I don’t think they can go back from this (along with things that happen with Mulder in the next episode). I’ll talk about a few more things in my “The Unnatural” post. If you disagree, that’s fine, but… I just love the idea of them having more time together, and I like the way my theory works! <3
If you want to know more about what I think happened after this episode, I’d love it if you’d read my fic “Bated Breath”. I feel that it expresses my thoughts pretty well about what I thought Scully went through, and where Mulder was as well.
