“The End” is episode twenty of season five of The X-Files and the season finale.
A chess game is taking place in front of a large audience. One player is a child; the other an adult. On a catwalk above, a man starts assembling a gun. The boy seems to notice something and looks around, and up at the catwalk. The shooter is aiming at him. The boy wins the game and leans back; his opponent gets shot. That looked like it wasn’t what the shooter intended.
The opening phrase for this episode is ‘THE END’.
In the Laurentian Mountains in Quebec, two parachutists land and head to a house, the one that the Cigarette Smoking Man was revealed to be living in “The Red and the Black”, not having died in “Redux II”. CSM does have a huge scar over his heart, though. The intruders set off a PIR and one gets shot through the door as he tries to open it. Which is why standing in front of the door in situations like that is a bad idea. The other follows CSM’s footprints and catches up. It’s Krycek and he’s been sent to bring CSM back.
Skinner is poking around Mulder’s office when Mulder arrives. He came to ask Mulder something and got curious as to his long-term plans, what Mulder hopes to find in the end. What Skinner actually came for was the assassination of a Russian chess player. The shooter is former NSA. Spender has been given the case, and the order came from outside the Bureau. Spender was very specific that Mulder be excluded.
Spender is giving a briefing when Mulder arrives; Scully is there. Mulder wants the tape of the assassination rewinding. Because he thinks the boy, Gibson, was the target. If Gibson hadn’t pushed back the exact moment he did, he would have got a bullet in the back of his neck. A woman says she thinks Mulder’s right. Gibson sensed the shooter beforehand. She wants the tape rewound as well. Spender doesn’t want to do so, but Skinner gets him to do it. And they see Gibson looking around.
The CSM meets with the rest of the group; he knows they sent the man to kill him, but all is forgiven. He assumes that they want him. Yes; to deal with Gibson. CSM offers to blow his brains out. Seemingly to wind up the Well-Manicured Man.
Mulder and Scully are in a car with the woman, Agent Fowley. She’s been doing terrorist stuff since 1991. Yes, about when Mulder got into the X-Files. They head to a psychiatric hospital where Gibson is. Gibson likes the cartoons; not so much Baywatch. And says that Mulder has a dirty mind. Gibson won’t play against the chess computer. Mulder says Gibson can read his mind. Gibson knows what Mulder is thinking about one of the girls he brought. One of them is thinking the same about Mulder. But Mulder doesn’t want Gibson to say which.
Mulder leaves and Scully follows. Mulder states that Gibson is no chess master. He may have beaten grandmasters, but that’s because he can read their minds. They’ve seen things like this before. Not to this extent, and Scully asks who would want to kill Gibson. It’s the ultimate advantage. Fowley suggests people in the business of keeping secrets. Fowley and Mulder know each other.
Mulder heads to the detention centre where the killer is being kept. Spender is leaving and doesn’t want Mulder in there. Mulder does not have a high opinion of Spender. He gets into the cell and gets Spender to go for food. The shooter has nothing to say. Mulder will let it be known that the shooter told Mulder that Gibson can read minds. Scully and Fowley have tests run on Gibson. First ECG then some mind reading tests. Gibson performs perfectly.
The shooter is handed a note by the guard. ‘You’re a dead man’. On Morley paper. The CSM’s brand.
Scully heads to see the Lone Gunmen to get their help with the neurological scans of Gibson’s brain. Because he’s apparently reading his opponents’ minds. First, though, she wants to know about Fowley. Fowley and Mulder were involved when he got out of the academy. She was there when he discovered the X-Files.
No cliff-hanger ending, but the first film, The X-Files: Fight the Future, is set between this episode and season six‘s “The Beginning”.