The X-Files is back and after last night’s disappointing premiere episode, “My Struggle,” it’s good to find the show back on track with the second episode, “Founder’s Mutation.” Here’s our recap.

‘The X-Files’ 2016 Miniseries Recap

“Founder’s Mutation”

After assuring viewers that The X-Files 2016 miniseries’ second episode would follow-up on the larger series mythology with a voiceover from Mulder about his alien baby, “Founder’s Mutation” jumps to a medical technology company called NuGenics. We meet researcher Dr. Sanjay just in time for him to hack into the corporate system and kill himself, seemingly manipulated to do so by a mysterious, high-pitched noise.

Mulder uncovers Sanjay’s personal life (refusing a blowjob in the process) while Scully conducts an autopsy (no one proffers cunnilingus) that reveals the victim’s last message: “Founder’s Mutation.” It has something to do with NuGenics founder and the mysterious hard drive Mulder isn’t allowed to access, but what?

Their search begins at Dr. Sanjay’s apartment, where they find files relating to genetic mutations in children, including a bunch of horrifying images of radically altered children - one kid hasa clawed hand and scales tearing through his skin. Even stranger, Mulder falls victim to the same high-pitched frequency, knocking him to the floor, but leaving everyone else unharmed.

A Classic ‘X-Files’ Cover-Up Begins

The Department of Defense steps in. This research belongs to them. he cover-up has begun.

In a scene that rewards viewers who have charted Mulder, Scully and Skinner’s complex interplay over the past twenty years, Director Skinner goes along with the cover-up just long enough for the DoD bureaucrat to leave the room and shut the door behind him. Then it’s off to the races, Skinner backing their plan to look into the possibility of twisted Department of Defense genetic researcher.

After a quick look at the surveillance footage of Dr. Sanjay shoving a letter opener into his ear, Scully and Mulder take a visit to a pregnancy clinic funded by NuGenics’ founder. Are the pregnant women nothing more than incubators for government genetics experiments? Was William—Mulder and Scully’s son (who they hid through adoption like Luke Skywalker)—no more than a Department of Defense guinea pig, his genetic code rigged with test material for the elites to use in their plan to flee Earth?

In response to the dark possibilities, Scully is treated to a horrific waking nightmare: her son growing with mutations that get worse and worse, until he’s something no longer quite human.

Mulder and Scully finally meet the “Founder,” Augustus Goldman, and discover that he has a number of radically mutated children kept behind glass. The children are mostly deformed, but some show signs of militarily-desirable abilities, including one girl who throws a full-on Akira-style,stuff flying through the air telekinetic tantrum. Is this just cutting-edge medical research, as Goldman claims, or something far more sinister?

Mulder and Scully Meet The X-Men

That question becomes easy to answer after one of Goldman’s patients is murdered to protect his secrets. Mulder and Scully are now convinced that Goldman is looking for the next stage of human evolution on behalf of the alien hybridizing grand conspiracy.

One story about a girl who can breathe underwater later and we’re pretty much just assembling The X-Men here.

After an absolutely horrific, jaw-dropping, beautifully gory depiction of a fetus psychically directing its pregnant mother to “let him out” with a butcher knife, we learn who was behind Sanjay’s murder. One of Goldman’s experimental X-Men has been disguising himself as a janitor and using his psychic shriek ray to try and track down his sister through the NuGenics network.

His sister turns out to be our Akira gal from earlier and the two super-powered siblings make a combined psychic, telekinetic escape. The best part? Goldman gets his eyeballs psychically squeezed out, in a blood-gushing scene worthy of The Walking Dead.

The episode ends with Mulder’s fantasy vision of life with his son: watching 2001: A Space Odyssey (hearing what Mulder has to say about The Monolith is fun) and shooting off model rockets. Mulder is definitely one of those dads with only a handful of hectoring stories that his children soon learn by heart. Too bad even his most optimistic visions are shattered by the trauma of alien abduction, once again leaving Mulder alone, uncertain, and tormented by forces that he can’t ever fully understand.

Overall, this second episode of the 2016 X-Files miniseries is a huge step up from the premiere, “My Struggle.”

The next episode of The X-Files miniseries, “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster,” premieres on Feb. 1.