#clyde bruckman's final repose | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

randomfoggytiger · 4 months ago

Text

All Things: Fellig's Fate, Scully's Immortality, and Waterston's Healing

I never subscribed to the "Scully is immortal" theory, but... there might be evidence pointing to, perhaps, a momentary brush with eternal life.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN'S FINAL REPOSE

"All right. So how do I die?"

"You don't."

Two infamous lines from an infamous episode.

Setting aside Darin Morgan's thoughts on the matter (that this was a kindness on Bruckman's part, not foreshadowing), the show has, thus far, provided no through line for immortality to be considered a possible end goal.

Until Season 6.

TITHONUS

Fellig was cursed with immortality after callously hoping Death would take the life of an innocent-- one who was trying to save him-- in his place. The episode showcased his barren existence and empty, unending eternity with a punctuated, nihilistic statement: "Seventy-five years is enough. Take my word for it. You live forever... sooner or later, you start to think about the big thing you're missing and that everybody else gets to find out about but you.... Love lasts seventy-five years, if you're lucky. You don't want to be around when it's gone."

But Fellig was not blessed, nor did he bless others, with love-- an endeavor of sacrifice and respect-- while he lived. More rotations around the sun hadn't worked on that deadened part of himself until he put aside his own goals (quite literally setting his camera aside) to humanely address the tragedy unfolding in front of him (Scully dying.) Even then, not without selfish intent-- hoping to pry the jaws of Death from its newest victim and turn them onto himself.

This leads us to the crux: was Scully given immortality?

Let's presume yes, for this theory. In that case, Fellig's expressions while Death stood over her, her expression after Mulder's rationalizations at her bedside, and the lessons she had yet to learn before all things add up to a grim picture that neatly mirrors her personal journey.

Fellig stopped taking her photograph because he saw an opportunity previous victims hadn't "offered": Death had taken an unusual interest in Scully. Fellig's face changed as he lowered the camera, demanding "Did you see him?" until Scully gave a dazed acknowledgment of some kind-- implying that Scully, like Fellig, saw Death as she lay dying; and Fellig knew it. (But did Scully see Death? That appears to be left up for interpretation-- did she write off what she saw later, or was she blind to Death's presence and thought Fellig was projecting his perceptions or delusions onto her?) Obeying the photographer's instruction (because she believed him, which she half-confesses in the hospital), Scully closed her eyes and lived while Fellig, finally, died.

At Scully's bedside she admitted to but brushed aside her immortality concerns ("You know, Mulder, I don't even know how I entertained the thought. People don't live forever.") However, Mulder's assertion-- "No, I think he would have. I just think that, that death only looks for you... once you seek its opposite"-- destroyed her rationalizations and leaves us, the audience, with similar, unanswered questions.

Death seems discriminatory. But why?

Since Emily, we've known that Scully fears attachment to others-- to life, in a own way-- because of her disruptive childhood. Tithonus pointed out those correlating factors between herself and solitary, loveless Fellig: although his form of detachment is ruthlessly different than hers-- considering human attachments a drag rather than a source of comfort or strength-- both model a form of distancing self-preservation.

If that be the case, the immortality theory could be viewed in a new light: that Death teaches lessons hand-in-glove with Life. Life would give others the chance to attach and learn and grow together while Death would be the respite from those lessons and pains and griefs. And, more importantly, that Death would deny itself to those who haven't learned and grown in Life. Perhaps a concept not dissimilar to Scully's Catholic purgatory, or perhaps one that aligns with the return of restless or reincarnated souls. Perhaps both.

ALL THINGS

all things is the culmination of Scully's advance-and-retreat to life, addressing her choices, doubts, coping mechanisms, and relationships. And while I posit it was necessary for her and Mulder to have started a romantic relationship in order to kickoff the episode's moral crisis (post here), I concede that Tithonus and its ripple effects would still echo behind each step she took regardless of the status of her partnership.

Not only that, but all things also smacks of the more personal aspects of Mulder's and Scully's cases littering Season 6. The episodes following Fight the Future address the irreparable bond of their partnership, from The Beginning to Field Trip; but, more importantly, Season 6 wove Fate-- others' and their own-- into each case: those who were doomed to its inevitability and those who accepted its inevitability in order to change it. Monday's Pam is the prime example of inevitable Fate, but Drive's doomed Crumps and Triangle's lost crew members and Dreamland's disrupted men-in-black and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas's cursed ghosts and S.R. 819's controlled Skinner and One Son's burnt conspirators and Agua Mala's isolated Dales and Arcadia's terrified neighborhood and Alpha's lupus-ed Berquist and Trevor's superpowered Rawls and Milagro's heartless Padgett and etc. all fill the spectrum between Pam's helpless victimization and Fellig's self-victimization. Mulder and Scully were directly affected by these victims: Tithonus was to Scully what Monday was to Mulder; and The Unnatural through Amor Fati was to him what Amor Fati through all things was to her.

We know that Fate has its fatal way with Mulder and Scully's life. Mulder often states (during moods of higher inclination) that their quest is fated, and Scully often saves herself or her partner from various impossible situations. (If one subscribes to The Field Where I Died, she also releases them from a reincarnation cycle-- post here.)

all things itself draws a fated comparison between Scully's choices and Mulder's presence, even in absentia. He is the choice she must make; or lose him, and herself, forever in the annals of some forgotten record book in some secluded library remembered sparsely every few decades. And Scully is deeply afraid of losing herself (to Mulder's quest or through her own choices), at first incorrectly hiding from that fear in Daniel's comfort and their rose-colored past.

In that light, this episode achieves quite a few aims under the umbrella of personal freedom. Scully is enlightened, leading to her spiritual and personal freedom; that enlightenment leads her to embrace life, honoring the choices she made with regards to the men of her past and present; and that embrace allows her to break the chains Fellig passed on to her. She is ready to live-- "death only looks for you once you seek its opposite"-- and die.

A SECONDARY SPECULATION: PASSING ON IMMORTALITY

I have one last thing to posit: Death found in Fellig what Fellig discovered in Scully; and Scully purged herself of that element-- and her immortality-- whilst saving Daniel Waterston's life.

Fate, again, comes to the fore: Mulder sent Scully on an errand for his case-- a loop to Never Again's disgruntled feelings and "orders"-- but that informant taught Scully how to heal herself and "let go." Scully was subsequently drawn to spiritual healing, and brought in a healer to save Waterston before he succumbed to his heart condition.

Spiritual healing, in this case, becomes another word for Death's lesson: thwarting Fate by accepting it. Fellig threw away his life and his happiness by first sacrificing someone else's, Scully was given immortality through Fellig's sacrifice, Colleen Azar saved her own life from self-destruction; and Daniel Waterston is given a second chance because of Fellig, Scully, and Colleen's shared lesson and redemption. And thus, we arrive at the moment of Daniel Waterston's recovery-- or, rather, the moment Scully's immortality is passed on to Daniel, miraculous healing included.

all things ends on the conclusion to Scully's arc, not Waterston's; but reconciliation and change loom largely in the form of his daughter Maggie. If Death is giving Daniel Waterston a second chance, it's up to him to turn it from a curse to a blessing.

However, there's a hitch to this theory: the nurse held Fellig's hand, and Fellig held Scully's hand while immortality played hot potato from one person to the next. all things lacks a scene where Scully passes along her immortality by touch to Daniel Waterston (except their brief contact before his cardiac arrest and after his spiritual healing.) However, the immortality exchanges in Tithonus differ in the minutiae-- the knowledge of the people involved, the health of the people involved, the cooperation of the people involved-- and leave us without any concrete "method" point to. Other than, of course, the reality that Death and Fellig were playing their own game with its own rules; and that Scully's immortality only fits into their picture if she is able to play the same game and beat it. Daniel Waterston squeezes into the final rounds only by a technicality; and his entry could still be debated to the end of time.

POSSIBLE STIPULATIONS

Death, in Tithonus at least, appears to be an impartial agent, passing immortality to the person currently avoiding his eyes. In that case, he would be a neutral-- even malignant-- figure rather than one teaching Dickensian ghost lessons. Death takes life and leaves decay without mercy, burying both the nurse and the photographer eventually.

Yet, we are given this perspective by Fellig himself, a man who views Death as a toying entity.

Separate from Fellig's observations, Death is depicted as a fair but clever judge, one who spares and punishes lives equally. Further, Mulder's examination of Death's motives implies one dark and one redemptive side: "death only looks for you once you seek its opposite" would be inconceivable to a man like Alfred Fellig but could be understood and changed by a woman like Dana Scully.

Fellig's brush with Death began with the barter of one woman's life, bringing to light the cold, calculated part of his personality. He continued to exist in that darkness until one unselfish act foisted his curse upon another woman. Scully, by comparison, internalized the lesson her predecessor avoided most of his unnatural life, and saved herself and another embittered man in the process.

If coincidences are coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?

CONCLUSION

Immortality in The X-Files is either a curse or a kindness, a multidimensional consequence of one's choices and fate.

Fellig, a man consumed by his own motives, viewed it as a cruel, cyclical punishment of Death's. Scully used it as a tool to break her own cycles, save Daniel Waterston, and set herself free. Daniel-- perhaps now similarly cursed-- might have used it to move beyond his own moral failings; or succumbed, again, to the cycle of his own making.

Death, Life, and Fate are the essence of The X-Files's existence, the tools by which its world and characters are shaped. Those who wish to circumvent them are chastised. Those who work alongside them are rewarded. And those who persevere with righteous action and truthful intent despite them are awarded a new path forward.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!