“Syzygy” is episode thirteen of season three of The X-Files.
A teenage boy is speaking at some sort of memorial to another. All the watchers are teenagers too. The speaker, Boom (a young Ryan Reynolds), says they need to protect each other because the cult is out to get them. Afterwards, two girls approach him and say they heard the cult is coming after a blonde virgin next. Both are blonde. He offers to give them a ride home. Both start talking in the car about removing one of the two requirements and Boom pulls off the road.
The next day, Caryl County sheriff’s cars find Boom’s truck, and Boom hanging from a cliff. At the top of the cliff, where the rope leads, are the two girls, sitting down and happily playing he loves me, he loves me not with a flower.
Mulder and Scully arrive at town and meet a detective White at Jay De Boom’s funeral. Boom’s death is the third one of a high school boy in as many months. A Satanic cult is suspected. Eyewitnesses recounted Satanic rituals. There’s a pause, and one of Boom’s friends is heard giving what sounds like exactly the same speech Boom did.
Scully says there is no concrete evidence about Satanists, and Mulder goes at length to explain why, as the FBI has debunked such. White thinks they will have a hard time convincing the locals, especially as the two girls confirmed seeing such. white interviewed them together. Scully isn’t happy about that. White doubts they could have made it up. Then Scully repeats what they probably said. A man comes in and says they need to take action. Then the coffin catches fire.
At the sheriff’s, Scully interviews Terri Roberts and Mulder her friend Margi Kleinjan. They recount what happen, about seeing a clearing full of people wearing black robes and holding black candles, and the sacrifice of a baby. Both accounts sound pretty much identical.
White, Mulder and Scully listen to the tapes afterwards and Scully says they are virtually identical. White believes that one corroborates the other. Which is a bit odd, as identical accounts normally tend to suggest fabrication. Scully says the stories could have been taken from any newspaper or magazine. Mulder explains once again. He can’t explain the burning coffin though.
Scully doubts that it’s anything more than embalming fluid that caused the fire, looking at the open coffin. Mulder and the detective see something on Boom’s chest that looks like a horned beast. Scully does not. Mulder would like photographs of the thing that bears nor resemblance to a horned beast.
Mulder heads to White’s house and suggests she put her cat inside. He apologises for Scully’s behaviour and asks if she wants to help him solve the mystery of the horny beast. This involves visiting an astrologer, Zirinka. She says the whole town has lost its marbles and she should have seen it coming. A rare planetary alignment with Mars, Mercury and Uranus exerting extreme influences. If Mulder wants more, these are her office hours.
The school gym has a horned beast – it’s the emblem of the basketball team. Terri and Margi are watching. They like the looks of one of the players, Scott. Then another crashes into the Gatorade covered table and splashes them both. They are not happy. The ball goes behind the bleachers, the boy who splashed the girls follows, the lights go out and the bleachers start collapsing. With him behind them.
Mulder and White are already there when Scully arrives. Apparently, a power surge caused it. Scully wonders where Mulder was. Following a lead. Then White says there’s a mob on the south side of town. The mob is digging in a field; they got a tip about where the mass grave of the murdered babies is. The leader of the mob, Bob, is the high school principal. He’s apparently not acting normally. Scully starts explaining again about the total lack of evidence when someone finds bones. The bones are in a leather case with initials of it, of a local doctor. So, the mob heads to see him.
The doctor says he sold the bag to one of the Roberts girls. He has no idea how it ended up in a field. Then Scully arrives and says he can go; the bones belonged to a dog, Mr. Tippy. Terri seems quite upset over this. However, at hers and Margi’s birthday party later on, the bag is casually dumped outside by the bin. The two girls are acting oddly.
In fact, everyone is acting oddly. Mulder and Scully are extremely snippy with each other and acting rather out of character. The town is searching for Satanists everywhere when it seems rather more likely the two girls are responsible.