When The X-Files returned in 2016 with the miniseries premiere “My Struggle” ( our recap ), Mulder and Scully were no longer an item. After the second episode in the 2016 X-Files miniseries, “Founder’s Mutation,” it’s clear that the end of their relationship was probably for the best.

Since Scully was first assigned to investigate Mulder in The X-Files, pilot viewers have been eagerly shipping the two. As The X-Files grew from a cult hit to a TV phenomenon in its 4 ^th season (moving from the 105^th to the 12^th most popular show on television) millions of fans clamored for Mulder and Scully to get it on. Or at least kiss. Boy, people really wanted that Mulder/Scully kiss…

‘The X-Files’: History of a Ship

Executive producer Chris Carter and his writers knew exactly what kind of romantic powder keg they had on their hands and spent five seasons expertly toying with viewers, culminating in The X-Files movie, wherein Mulder and Scully’s lips brushed, but failed to lock. Instead, Scully was stung by a bee, infected with an alien virus, and carted off to Antarctica.

Another time Scully very nearly kissed a shapeshifting rapist disguised as Mulder.

Then there was that time that Mulder smooched an alternate timeline version of Scully while they were fighting Nazis in the Bermuda Triangle.

But it wasn’t until the fourth episode of The X-Files seventh season that Mulder and Scully finally kissed. Their romance continued to be a subtle undercurrent on the show through the remaining two seasons, including obvious allusions to a sexual dimension to their relationship that was largely left offscreen.

Despite Mulder being forced into hiding by the events of The X-Files series’ end, they remained a couple through the 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want To Believe. More kissing happens.

2016 ‘X-Files’ Miniseries: Romance Ends

And then, without any explanation, it was over. When The X-Files returned in 2016, they were apart.

In the 2016 premiere episode, “My Struggle,” this looks like a great decision on Dana Scully’s part. Mulder is a sweating, paranoid mess. While Scully saves children with her medical degree, Mulder has spun around in conspiratorial circles, continuing to look for answers to the UFO enigma. Few could question the obvious chemistry between the duo in 90s episodes of The X-Files, but none of that same sizzle is evident in “My Struggle.”

For one, Mulder is a terrible listener. After learning from an abductee that it was men, not aliens, that had pulled her up into their spaceship and run experiments on her, Mulder’s worldview is shattered. In an instant he throws out everything he thought he knew about the alien conspiracy. He feverishly dashes about, ranting and raving at Assistant Director Walter Skinner and at Scully.

But if he had only paid attention for the last two decades, he would’ve known that his “new” theory was perfectly in line with what Dana Scully had been saying for years. Yes, there’s a conspiracy, Scully would insist, but why does the evidence suggest aliens instead of factions within our own government? Instead Mulder yells at her, all recollection of her years of patient, skeptical research forgotten.

By the end of the 2016 X-Files miniseries premiere Mulder has an entire new theory of history, cobbled together from one experimental spaceship, the testimony of a single abductee, and the opaque, half-confirmation from a doctor present at the Roswell crash site: yet another in a long line of whistleblowers who are willing to do nothing beyond telling Mulder to keep digging.

When Mulder confronts Scully in a parking garage and gushes out a stream-of-conscious theory about global elites fleeing the planet before a devastating global warming “Venus Syndrome” it’s clear that he has no life beyond the conspiracy. Reunited with his longtime partner and lover, Mulder can only rant, spinning around obsessions that have become his entire life.

For much of “My Struggle” Scully is haunted by her past, confronted with her alien DNA and her own abduction experience. For Scully, reopening the X-Files is a deeply personal affair. In the 2016 X-Files’ second episode, “Founder’s Mutation,” Scully tackles one of the biggest consequences of her work head-on.

While investigating radical experimentation on children (possibly to create positive genetic traits for the world elites’ escape from Earth), Mulder and Scully come across programs that may be related to the birth of their son, William.

Scully was meant to be infertile due to experimentation done on her during her abduction. Since the aliens (or humans, depending on your interpretation) had been collecting Scully’s ova and conducting human-alien hybridity experiments across the planet, it’s near certain that William’s conception and birth were not thanks to natural human processes. In an effort to keep William safe, Scully had him put up for adoption. Mulder and Scully’s son is lost to them.

In 2016 William is 15 years old. Prompted to dredge up their painful memories, Mulder and Scully rely on each other throughout “Founder’s Mutation.” This is not the ranting Mulder of “My Struggle.” Instead Mulder and Scully in the second episode are life-long confidantes, burdened with multiple overlapping traumas. They lean on each other, but it seems more from pain than love.

Most telling are the nightmarish daydreams Mulder and Scully are subjected to in “Founder’s Mutation,” each imagining what their life would be like had they raised William.

For Scully, watching William grow is joy curdling into horror and pain, as William manifests increasingly radical mutations from the hybridity experiments.

For Mulder, raising William is a chance to impart his wisdom and share his more casual interests (2001: A Space Odyssey and model rockets). But their relationship is shattered by abduction, the same extraterrestrial things that took away his sister come for his son.

Both visions are tragic and both visions are of raising a child alone. Even in their fantasies, Mulder and Scully don’t see themselves together.

Leave Mulder and Scully Alone

While Mulder and Scully’s romantic dimension was deeply important to viewers of The X-Files during its original nine season run, the 2016 miniseries is the perfect time to admit that they’re no longer right for each other. Not because their personalities are incompatible (okay, a little bit that), but because they’ve both been irreversibly transformed by all they’ve seen and done. And while the two still find strength in each other, their essential shapes have been bent apart.

Relationships end and often there is no putting them back together. So while it may be tempting to clamor for another kiss, to demand that new episodes of The X-Files (should it continue beyond this 2016 miniseries) reinvigorate the passion and intimacy we clung to, it wouldn’t be right for the Mulder and Scully they’ve become.