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Do you believe The X-Files should have ended after seven seasons?

Yes. I will go even further and say the series should have ended a third of the way into season seven with ”Closure.” By that point, the colonization story arc had a satisfactory ending. The only plot point lingering--that of Samantha Mulder’s fate--was rsolved in “Closure.” The two driving forces behind the show were gone, so that should have been it. The X-Files would have ended on a high point creatively there.

But the series was dragged on pointlessly. The rest of the seventh season was filled with comedy and episodes which were little more than personal indulgences the main actors were allowed to write and/or direct. I will concede the season finale would have served as a decent series finale, too. It would make dramatic sense for Mulder to ultimately be abducted himself and Scully to miraculously become pregnant. Such would give both what they wanted most. It would have left their ultimate fates up to the audience to decide, but The X-Files had a long habit of leaving conclusions open ended and often bleak.

Not to take away anything from Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish, but they had big shoes to fill. The X-Files was not just about aliens and monsters. It was about Mulder and Scully. Create a new show like Bones or Castle with Patrick and Gish, and it might have run seven years itself. But put them in a spot in which they have to compete with Mulder and scully, and they were doomed to fail. The shadows hung too heavy in the air.

Those two final seasons were just bad. We knew Duchovny is gone for most of the eighth season, so there were no room for surprises. Qw knew he was completely gone for the ninth season, but characters talked about him as though he could show up any minute. In the few episodes he did appear in, duchovny was practically tapping his watch impatiently throughout. Anderson looked increasingly bored. The new mythology was uninteresting and really overkill. There were too many new characters to absorb. They drifted too much attempting to find their voice. The monsters have the week were losing their edge, too. An Indian mystic who crawls up people’s butts? Really, Chris Carter? You signed off on that?

There are some eighth and ninth season episodes worth watching, but overall, I liken those seasons to rooting for an aging baseball player. You want to see him keep on playing, but you really wish he had retired before his rapid decline so your last memories would have been him at the top of his game. Instead, he is forced to quit because he simply has no juice left. You hate for your last image of him to be limping off the field, but that is what happens when you stick around too long.