‘The X-Files,’ Season 10, Episode 2 Recap: Scully & Mulder Struggle To Solve The Case In ‘Founder’s Mutation’

The X-Files returned Monday night with the second episode of its reboot season – “Founder’s Mutation – that presented a mystery that Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) were hard-pressed to solve.

The X-Files Season 10, Episode 2 Recap

Dr. Sonny Sanjay has entered high-tech biochemical company Nugenics Technology, where he works on stem cell research. He struggles to concentrate during a meeting due to his hallucination-inducing migraines. After the meeting, in one of the facility’s computer labs, Sanjay downloads some files as his coworkers call for him to open the locked door. He’s then overcome by the crippling pain in his head. Sanjay then furiously scribbles some notes on his hand before ramming a letter opener into his ear, ending the pain and his life.

Mulder and Scully are on the case, looking into Sangay’s suspicious death. Things get more suspicious when the Department of Defense keeps them from taking Sanjay’s hard drive into evidence. With the hard drive out, Mulder gets a hold of Sanjay’s cell phone, from which he gathers that he had been calling the same number every night.

Mulder meets with the man on the other end of the line, Gupta, at a bar. He learns from Gupta that Sanjay had long been living a double life. After the meeting, Mulder meets up with Scully, who had been performing an autopsy on Sanjay, removing the letter opener from his ear and finding the note he’d left on his hand, which read, “Founder’s Mutation.” The two eventually head to Sanjay’s secret apartment, where they find pictures of deformed children on a wall – and Mulder experiences the piercing pain that led Sanjay to kill himself.

The following day, the Department of Defense attempts to boot Mulder and Scully off the case, but Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) gets them a few extra days to figure out what happened. Their instincts lead them to Augustus Goldman (Doug Savant), who runs Nugenics Technology. They learn more about how he’s working with the deformed children in his care. Though there weren’t any obvious red flags during the meeting, Mulder and Sully soon learn that a young pregnant woman they met earlier was killed and her unborn baby removed and stolen. Are Goldman’s experiments on babies creating the deformed children?

Goldman’s ex-wife Jackie seems to think so, and tells Mulder and Sully as much. She also informs them that she saved her son from Goldman. However, the son, Kyle (Jonathan Whitesell), might be responsible for Sanjay’s death. When Mulder and Sully track him down, he neutralizes Mulder with the high-frequency sonar. Eventually, they manage to bring Kyle to Goldman and to his sister. As it turns out both Kyle and his sister possess superpowers and are able to team up to throw Mulder and Sully to the ground and kill their father.

Mulder and Sully, while working on the case about children, are each confronted with the reality that the son they had put up for adoption would be 15 years old now. Though Mulder claimed to an emotional Sully that he had put the pain of giving him up behind him, the episode closes with him staring at a picture of his baby.