Revisiting The X-Files: season 1 episode 18

18: Miracle Man

Mulder's sister comes back to haunt him in X-Files episode eighteen, but all is not what it seems. For a start, Scully's firmly back to her usual quirked-eyebrow, sceptical self, and her insistence that if you want to see something enough, you will, is causing Mulder to doubt the validity of the visions of his sister running about in a red dress like the girl from Don't Look Now.

The story revolves around a boy, Samuel, who once brought a horribly burned man back from the dead simply by the power of his touch alone. Years later, the burned man (complete with a new but still mangled face) is part of a group of Evangelists who tour the grown-up Samuel around like the freakiest freak in the freak show. This clan, led by a shifty Reverend who appears to have profited considerably from the donations made to his cause, make things very difficult for Mulder and Scully, impeding their investigations every step of the way. The reason they have been called in is that, after supposedly being "healed" by Samuel, a number of people have suddenly died, apparently without cause. The fact that Samuel has gone missing makes things look increasingly suspicious.

Samuel does turn up, pretty quickly, drowning his sorrows in a bar. He's fully convinced God is punishing him for taking his gift for granted and exploiting it, and even confesses to murdering many people. Before being taken away, however, he says he can see Mulder's pain, and goes into detail about a missing sister …

From this point on, Mulder has visions of little Samantha gazing at him from across fields, ducking between rows of seated people inside a marquee, etc … But whether this is real or just some illusion, he cannot tell.

It would appear there is a corrupt sheriff at work here, and subsequently a number of cronies are introduced into Samuel's cell and proceed to beat him to death. Miraculously, he later returns from the dead and walks straight out of the morgue. It's revealed that the man whom he brought back to life - the burned man - is the one behind the murders, killing people off with poison and making it look like Samuel did it. This was in order to punish him for bringing him, the burned man, back to life (if you'd been burned beyond all recognition, you'd probably have wanted to stay dead, too, so his actions are kind of understandable).

The strongest thing to say of this episode was that, for once, I didn't have a clue who the killer was until it was revealed. Normally it's pretty easy to see where an episode is going, and how the story will pan out, but, owing largely to the fact that the story focused more on Mulder's belief in seeing his sister and less on exploring possible killers, that was not the case here.

Check out Matt's review of the preceding episode here.