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The Best Episodes of The X-Files

Every episode of The X-Files ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of The X-Files!

The Best Episodes of The X-Files

The exploits of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who investigate X-Files: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder believes in the existence...
  1. Background image for Bad Blood
    9.2/10(7.4k votes)

    #1 - Bad Blood

    S5:E12

    After Mulder chases down and kills a young man who he believes to be a vampire, the agents return to DC aware of the mistake they just made. Faced with a lawsuit from the family of the man, they recount each of their sides to the story leading up to the event. In the extremely humorous stories that follow we see how Scully and Mulder both perceive each other.

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    Director:Cliff Bole
  2. Background image for Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
    9.0/10(6.2k votes)

    #2 - Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man

    S4:E7

    The Lone Gunmen reveal the (possibly fake) secret history of the Cigarette Smoking Man to Mulder and Scully; from a young captain in the U.S. Army recruited to assassinate President Kennedy, to becoming the mysterious man in the shadows at the height of a global conspiracy.

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  3. Background image for Redux II (3)
    9.0/10(4.8k votes)

    #3 - Redux II (3)

    S5:E2

    The Cigarette-Smoking Man helps Mulder to obtain Scully's cure and also lets him see his real sister who doesn't turn out to be as happy to see Mulder as he would've liked. In return for this, the Cigarette-Smoking Man asks that Mulder quit the FBI and work for him in the Syndicate where he could have power and respect which Mulder turns down, deciding to stay on the side of justice. While Scully's cure appears to have worked, the Cigarette-Smoking Man faces his own enemies and disappears, presumed dead.

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    Director:Kim Manners
  4. Background image for Small Potatoes
    8.9/10(5.8k votes)

    #4 - Small Potatoes

    S4:E20

    Five babies in the same town are all born with tails and the local OB-GYN is blamed for tampering with fertilized eggs. However, Mulder discovers the culprit to be a simple man with a genetic deformity who may have the ability to alter his appearance.

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    Director:Cliff Bole
  5. Background image for Dreamland (1)
    8.9/10(5.1k votes)

    #5 - Dreamland (1)

    S6:E4

    While being detained near the famed "Dreamland" Area 51, a strange craft flies overhead and Mulder swaps bodies with an Area 51 "Man-in-Black". While the other agent has fun in Mulder's body, Mulder himself finds it difficult to fit into someone else's life, especially a shadowy one. Mulder contacts Scully about the body swap and tries to get her the flight data recorder from the UFO test flight, but his alter ego uses Mulder's FBI persona to have him arrested.

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  6. Background image for Home
    8.8/10(7.3k votes)

    #6 - Home

    S4:E2

    A baby is found buried alive in shallow ground and appears to have birth defects resulting from generations of inbreeding, leading Mulder and Scully to a reclusive family who have a history of inbred children.

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  8. Background image for The End
    8.8/10(4.2k votes)

    #7 - The End

    S5:E20

    The Cigarette-Smoking Man returns as Mulder investigates the attempted assassination of a young boy with psychic powers who may be the proof that he has looked for all his life.

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  9. Background image for Dreamland II (2)
    8.8/10(4.8k votes)

    #8 - Dreamland II (2)

    S6:E5

    Mulder is thrown in jail at the Area 51 compound but is released when it is discovered that the flight data recorder he stole was a fake. Scully comes to her senses and realizes that the Mulder she sees isn't who he really is and heads back to Nevada to help the real Mulder. Meanwhile, the mechanism that caused the body swap is rapidly snapping back, undoing everything in its wake, and Mulder and his alter ego must race to put themselves back where they belong.

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  10. Background image for One Son (2)
    8.8/10(4.1k votes)

    #9 - One Son (2)

    S6:E12

    The Cigarette-Smoking Man reveals all the government secrets from the past 50 years in order for his son, Jeffery Spender, to join him in his work. Mulder learns that the final stage of the conspiracy will soon begin with the hybridization of the Syndicate members, and he must stop it from happening. Agent Spender deceives his father and arranges for Mulder and Scully to be reassigned to the X-Files, which doesn't sit too well with the Cigarette-Smoking Man.

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  11. Background image for The Erlenmeyer Flask
    8.7/10(61 votes)

    #10 - The Erlenmeyer Flask

    S1:E24

    When Deep Throat points out a news story about a fugitive who apparently drowned, Mulder and Scully cannot see what makes the case special but follow it up anyway. With Deep Throat's insistence, they discover evidence of a secret government project code-named Purity Control, which uses human test subjects and infects them with extraterrestrial DNA. However, the evidence and everyone who has seen it is quickly being eliminated.

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  12. Background image for Paper Hearts
    8.7/10(5.2k votes)

    #11 - Paper Hearts

    S4:E10

    Mulder's dreams help him in finding the body of a little girl which reopens one of his old cases in the Violent Crimes Unit. This leads him to believe that the killer he captured had more victims and that Mulder's sister Samantha may have been one of them.

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    Director:Rob Bowman
  13. Background image for Monday
    8.7/10(5.0k votes)

    #12 - Monday

    S6:E14

    A woman is forced to relive the same day over and over as she tries to prevent Mulder and Scully from being killed by her boyfriend during a bank robbery attempt. As the events restart again and again, Mulder's sense of Deja-vu grows stronger.

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  14. Background image for Gethsemane (1)
    8.6/10(4.2k votes)

    #13 - Gethsemane (1)

    S4:E24

    Mulder fights to prove that a discovery frozen in the mountains of Canada is an irrefutable evidence of alien life, but his quest for the truth only leads to more lies and an unthinkable conclusion.

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  15. Background image for Redux (2)
    8.6/10(4.5k votes)

    #14 - Redux (2)

    S5:E1

    Scully helps Mulder fake his own death in order for him to go undetected through the Department of Defence and find out the answers to his new questions about the government hoax concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, at a joint FBI/DOD inquiry, Scully's attempt to drive out the Conspiracy's informant is halted as her cancer takes a bad turn.

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    Director:Kim Manners
  16. Background image for Anasazi (1)
    8.5/10(46 votes)

    #15 - Anasazi (1)

    S2:E25

    Mulder receives an encrypted computer disk containing the defense department's top secret files on extraterrestrial life and becomes a target. Scully takes him to a Navajo family that unearthed a buried secret to decipher the disk.

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  17. Background image for Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
    8.5/10(56 votes)

    #16 - Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose

    S3:E4

    In the midst of a psychic sideshow while on a murder case, Mulder and Scully enlist the help of a man who may have a true psychic ability to foresee how people will die to help the agents catch a man killing fortune tellers.

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    Director:David Nutter
  18. Background image for Tunguska (1)
    8.5/10(4.7k votes)

    #17 - Tunguska (1)

    S4:E8

    Mulder is given a tip about potentially dangerous paramilitary operations on the U.S. soil but during the sting operation is surprised to find out the identity of his mysterious informant - it turns out to be Alex Krycek. Suspicious about his true motives, Mulder reluctantly follows the information provided by Krycek. However, soon he discovers a much bigger conspiracy which takes him to a gulag in Tunguska, Russia where prisoners are being used for experiments involving a substance of alien origin.

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  19. Background image for The Post-Modern Prometheus
    8.5/10(6.3k votes)

    #18 - The Post-Modern Prometheus

    S5:E5

    Filmed in glorious black and white with a comic book feel to it, this is a modern retelling of Frankenstein as Mulder and Scully get caught up in a town where the residents live on Jerry Springer episodes and fear a two-faced monster who has been impregnating the women.

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    Director:Chris Carter
  20. Background image for Folie à Deux
    8.5/10(4.5k votes)

    #19 - Folie à Deux

    S5:E19

    Mulder is held hostage inside an office where a man claims his boss is a monster and has clouded all their minds while he turns them into zombies one by one, which is disbelieved until Mulder opens his mind and allows himself to see it too.

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    Director:Rob Bowman
  21. Background image for Drive
    8.5/10(4.8k votes)

    #20 - Drive

    S6:E2

    Mulder is trapped in a car with a man who has developed a serious ear condition which can only be suppressed by driving west at high speeds. As Scully tries to find the cause and a cure for the problem, Mulder and the man get closer and closer to the ocean.

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    Director:Rob Bowman
  22. Background image for Triangle
    8.5/10(5.5k votes)

    #21 - Triangle

    S6:E3

    Mulder goes to the Bermuda Triangle when he learns that the Queen Anne, a British luxury liner which disappeared during WWII, has reappeared in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Mulder's boat is wrecked and after floating in the water, he is hauled aboard the ship which has just been hijacked by the Nazis searching for the man who will build the atom bomb. Mulder tries to convince the crew that they have traveled into the future, but evidence further suggests that it is he who is back in the past.

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    Director:Chris Carter
  23. Background image for Two Fathers (1)
    8.5/10(4.0k votes)

    #22 - Two Fathers (1)

    S6:E11

    While the Cigarette-Smoking Man recites to an unseen listener everything about the work of the Syndicate involving a global conspiracy in cooperation with an alien species, Cassandra Spender reappears and is pursued by the scientists who would rather kill her than keep her alive. Cassandra runs to Mulder's apartment and demands that he shoot her because she is the culmination of 50 years work - a living alien/human hybrid - and colonization will begin if the aliens find out about her.

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  24. Background image for Field Trip
    8.5/10(4.4k votes)

    #23 - Field Trip

    S6:E21

    When the bodies of a couple who have been missing for less than a week are discovered to have been reduced to bone, Mulder suggests that recent paranormal phenomena in the area may have caused the accelerated decomposition.

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  25. Background image for Ice
    8.4/10(82 votes)

    #24 - Ice

    S1:E8

    In the claustrophobic isolation of a remote outpost in Alaska, Mulder and Scully investigate the horrifying deaths of scientists.

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  26. Background image for Herrenvolk (2)
    8.4/10(4.7k votes)

    #25 - Herrenvolk (2)

    S4:E1

    With his mother on a deathbed and the alien bounty hunter in pursuit, Mulder decides to put Jeremiah Smith, the alien healer, in mortal danger for a chance to finally uncover the whole truth behind the alien conspiracy. Meanwhile, the Syndicate suspects that they have a traitor in their midst and set up a trap.

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Best Episodes Summary

"Bad Blood" is the best rated episode of "The X-Files". It scored 9.2/10 based on 7390 votes. Directed by Cliff Bole and written by Vince Gilligan, it aired on 2/22/1998. This episode scored 0.2 points higher than the second highest rated, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man".