a rose bi any other name

Digital painting of Buffy and The Master from Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1.

I think the writers made a promise in S02E17 End Game, when Mulder asks the alien bounty hunter where his sister is and is told, “She’s alive.” And in S03E01 Blessing Way, when Mulder asks the specter of his father, “Is my sister here?” and is told no. We were told that Samantha is alive, and so we looked forward to the day when we got to see that reunion.

Obviously there’s an interpretation of the former that is, “He was lying,” and an interpretation of the latter that is, “Bill Mulder wasn’t real; he was a figment of FWM’s imagination.” But we were told those things deliberately so that we would believe she was alive—and then when the show was ending, they just tried to find something that technically wrapped the storyline.

But Mulder (and we) deserved to find Samantha alive. He deserved to hug her. He deserved to tell her that he never stopped looking. That he never gave up. Even when everyone else thought he was insane, even when the rest of their family was gone and he was the only one who carried her memory—he never accepted that there was a world in which he wouldn’t find her.

He suffered. He toiled. He cried. He was a pariah, a joke, a freak, a loser. He risked everything, and gave up nearly everything, and he never begrudged the cost, because at the end of the road was supposed to be finding her.