Highlights
- Scully keeps Mulder grounded, from space theories to lizard people.
- Her skepticism, among other things, challenges Mulder’s extreme beliefs in UFOs.
- Scully’s character grows to consider unscientific possibilities.
The X-Files is known for its iconic power couple of FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. They explore strange phenomena surrounding UFOs, government conspiracies, and things that go bump in the night. Its influence still permeates popular culture today, with references appearing anywhere from the Cartoon Network to Nintendo video games.
A classic part of the show’s legacy is its iconic lines, from “The truth is out there” to “I want to believe.” Quite a few memorable lines come from Dana Scully, who is usually the calm rationalist who keeps Mulder’s head from going too far into orbit. Some of her quotes range from the profound to even the downright hilarious.
1 “Yeah, This Is How I Like My Mulder.”
Scully Misses The Obsessive Monster Guy
|
Episode |
S10 E3 Mulder and Scully Meet The Weremonster |
|
Air Date |
Feb 1, 2016 |
|
Director |
Darin Morgan |
The X-Files revival in 2016 saw Mulder beginning to lose his sense of wonder, with several mysteries being explained thanks to modern technology. It takes an encounter with a man who claims to be a bipedal lizard to restore his faith. When Mulder concludes that a lizard man was behind recent murders in an Oregon town, he not only tells Scully his theory but also narrates the likely course of their predictable back-and-forth on such matters.
Scully cannot help but smile at Mulder’s raving. Sure, his ideas are not from planet Earth, but that’s her Mulder, the Mulder that she fell in love with in the first place. He wouldn’t be him otherwise.
2 “I Thought I Did.”
Scully Won’t Believe What She Sees Or Doesn’t
|
Episode |
S7 E21 Je Souhaite |
|
Air Date |
May 14, 2000 |
|
Director |
Vince Gilligan |
Scully, throughout her time with Mulder, has been proven wrong by him time and time again. Yet still, she refuses to believe Mulder’s theories. She can even be more biased than Mulder himself, refusing to acknowledge what is right in front of her eyes, or even what isn’t in front of them.
Scully finds herself in possession of the body of a man turned invisible by a genie. When Scully invites others to experience this revelation herself, she finds that the invisible body has vanished, causing Scully to believe that she was hallucinating. Mulder points out that “It is what is. You examined an invisible body, right?” All she does is shrug and say “I thought I did,” prompting Mulder to groan in disbelief. Scully just doesn’t want to believe.
3 “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
Scully Is Not In A Happy Mood
|
Episode |
S3 E13 |
|
Air Date |
Jan 26, 1996 |
|
Director |
Rob Bowman |
This quote has become a meme in the X-Files community. Scully says it when she and Mulder take a detour in Codigy, New Hampshire, where two teenage girls seem to have abilities granted to them by the Devil himself, which they use to kill fellow teenagers.
According to a local astrologist, this coincides with an alignment of three planets, which can impact individuals’ behavior, including Scully’s and Mulder’s. They get testy with each other, such as when Mulder asks Scully to take some photos of a marking on a body that he believes appears Satanic. This prompts Scully to say that line. Her deadpan expression in the delivery is the icing on the cake.
4 “I Won’t Bother Asking If You Said What I Thought You Just Said Because I Know It’s What You Just Said.”
Mulder’s In Some Weird Stuff Again
|
Episode |
S3 E12 War of the Coprophages |
|
Air Date |
Jan 5, 1996 |
|
Director |
Kim Manners |
In “War of the Coprophages,” Mulder hunts for UFOs in a small forest town. There, he discovers that several of the townspeople have seemingly been devoured by cockroaches. When Mulder tells Scully of this over the phone, it prompts her to respond in this way.
At this point in the series, Scully and Mulder have been working together for a little over two years. Scully is used to hearing crazy theories and scenarios and expects him to get into crazy situations. Chiding Mulder about it, completely at ease in her own home, and knowing Mulder can take it, shows just how close the two of them have become.
5 “I Think Maybe We Need To Keep Our Minds Open To Extreme Possibilities.”
She Is Beginning To Believe
|
Episode |
S5 E10 Chinga |
|
Air Date |
Feb 8, 1998 |
|
Director |
Kim Manners |
Scully takes a weekend off in a coastal Maine town because, of course, an episode co-written by Stephen King takes place in Maine. There, she learns of a string of deaths somehow linked to a mother believed by the townspeople to be a witch. Also, her little girl holds a creepy-looking doll.
As the investigation continues, she can’t help but wonder if something unscientific is occurring, and tells a local police officer that they should consider “extreme possibilities.” This moment shows just how much Scully’s time with Mulder has changed her. Scully is usually the unyielding rationalist, always adhering to what can be explained by science. After all their adventures, she comes to realize that science cannot explain everything.
6 “You Never Saw This. This Didn’t Happen. If You Tell Anyone, You’re A Dead Man.”
She Allegedly Said This
|
Episode |
S3 E20 Jose Chung’s From Outer Space |
|
Air Date |
April 12, 1996 |
|
Director |
Rob Bowman |
The X-Files typically dealt with dark subjects, including murders, abductions, and government conspiracies. It has also had fun with its subject matter, as is the case with the episode “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.” The author interviews Scully and witnesses about a case she and Mulder investigated, with increasingly ridiculous accounts of what happened.
In one case, an eyewitness tells of Scully and Mulder, whom he interpreted as “Men in Black,” arriving on the scene of an alien body. In this account, Scully maliciously threatens him. The stoic Scully is not known for using scare tactics such as this, and her over-the-top delivery, grabbing the witness by the shirt and shining a flashlight in his face, makes it even more preposterous.
Leave a Reply