For those few of you who requested I review Millennium, this episode review is as close as you are likely to get. The episode wraps uo the series major story arc after it had been cancelled in the previous year. One figures the resolution does not gel with whatever was originally planned for the series--assuming in those re-Lost days there was one--but at least it‘s closure..
I am not certain I count myself among Millennium fans. The series had a great start--for a time there, its pilot was the highest rated first episode premiere in history, believe it or not--but went steadily downhill from their until it was unceremoniously cancelled a year before the fateful turning of the year 2000. Nevertheless, the show had its moments, and I am glad it got a sense of closure.
Millennium was about retired FBI profiler Frank Black. Black, who has some often ambiguous mental abilities to get inside the heads of the criminals he profiled, is recruited by the Millennium Group, a cadre of retired FBI agents who consulted with law enforcement. Secretly, they were a cult who feared the turn of the millennium would bring about the apocalypse. As the series went on, the group split into factions with agendas of their own. Truth be told, I had lost most interest by that point and know very little of what happened passed the middle of the second season. I suspect no one reading really cares, either. Terry O’Quinn played a very John Locke-esque true believer with a gray moral code, so there is that.
“Millennium” skips a bunch of that. Only Black and his daughter Jordan appear. The plot of a necromancer reviving four members of the Millennium Group upon their suicides as representative of the Four Horsemen is most certainly a story arc resolution created exclusively for this episode without any bearing on how Millennium might have ended had the show not been cancelled. Frankly, it comes across as rather subdued considering the build up the series gave thew turn of the millennium.
(Yes, I know the millennium did not actyallu start until 2001. Scully remarks that, too. I am just going with the show’s mythos. No ’gotchas” in the comments, please.)
“Millennium’ features Mulder and scully investigating what appears to be the grave robbery of the fourth former FBI agent to commit suicide. Scully believes the act was an old enemy taking revenge. Mulder immediately suspects necromancy, or a raising from the dead. His suspicions are confirmed when skinner takes them aside to inform them of the existence of the Millennium Group and that all four of the former FBI agents were members.
The agents go to a sanitarium in Maryland in which black has checked himself into. He has had his daughter taken away from him due to his obsession with stopping the Millennium Group from bringing about the apocalypse. He wants to put all that behind him and get his daughter back, but he does offer the agents some clues about who the four for agents were, how they planned to bring about the End Times, and profiles of the necromancer.
The remainder of the episode is your standard zombie movie. Both mulder and scully are attacked in separate locations. Mulder winds up trapped in the necromancer’s basement with the now Four Horsemen. The whole scenario is resolved by headshots to all four. Because that is the only way to stop a zombie. It seems like an anti-climactic way to prevent the apocalypse, but I guess something in life have to come easy every now and then.
Black is reunited with Jordan after leaving the loony bin for good, which is kind of puzzling since he left in order to kill four zombies in order to save the world. Usually going on a quest like that lands you in a padded room, not lets you out of one. After they leave, Mulder and scully watch the ball drop, finally locking for the first official time in real continuity. Here you go, shippers:
The world did not end.
“Millennium” is a decent episode, but it does feel small in comparison to the suspenseful build up that Millennium gave us. It really is your standard zombie flick with a bad guy the Millennium Group just sort of contracted out their major purpose to do with about ten minutes of screen time for lance Henrikson as Black. I think if I was more of a Millennium fan, I would feel gypped.
As a fan of The X-Files, I feel gypped that Scully is shown a photo of the Millennium Group’s symbol--a snake eating itself called an ouroboros--but does not appear to recognize it in "Never Again:. An ouroboros is the symbol she once had tattooed on the small of her back. You would think she would recall it. Regardless, decent episode, but nothing to write home about--unless you are a shipper. Then there is the kiss.
Rating: *** (out of 5)
For those few of you who requested I review Millennium, this episode review is as close as you are likely to get. The episode wraps uo the series major story arc after it had been cancelled in the previous year. One figures the resolution does not gel with whatever was originally planned for the series--assuming in those re-Lost days there was one--but at least it‘s closure.. 
The world did not end.
