5 Best X-Files Episodes, Ranked

It's nothing short of impressive how "The X-Files," a series that began in the early '90s and ended in the early aughts (before it was brought back for a rather underwhelming revival 15 years later), has remained so enduringly relevant in pop culture over the years. Undoubtedly, its legacy and impact on television and the sci-fi genre have been pivotal — so much so that recent Oscar-winner Ryan Coogler is currently working on making his own version of it. 

In the past few months, we've been re-watching some of the most highly-regarded and praised episodes of the show, and we've been delighted (and pleasantly surprised) by how most of them hold up today. The writing still feels sharp and playful, the direction adroit and effective, but it's the practical effects (which often make or break an episode) that have left us completely in awe in terms of aging (which can't be said about the premature and often cheesy CGI the series sporadically used in those days).

Astonishingly, Chris Carter's show amassed over 200 episodes during its run, which is why it's a nigh-impossible task to narrow it all down to the best five without leaving out personal and fan favorites. Thus, by no means is this an exhaustive list, but a mere attempt to highlight some of the show's absolute best.

As much as "The X-Files" was dominated by its continuous UFO and alien storylines in the early days — which undoubtedly helped the show become a worldwide phenomenon — often referred to as "mytharc," we've found that many of those episodes didn't age as well as one would expect. However, the ones that dared to poke fun at the entire alien hysteria and the conspiracy theories surrounding them were a ton of fun in retrospect.

Season 3's "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" is a sublime example. The episode tells the story of an alien abduction recalled from multiple perspectives as Scully (Gillian Anderson) is interviewed by famous author Jose Chung (Charles Nelson Reilly), who's doing research to write a ground-breaking "non-fiction science fiction" novel, the first of its kind. Given the multiple testimonies from victims to witnesses to sci-fi nutcases and the FBI agents themselves, contradictions and wild theories abound about what actually happened to the two abductees in question. 

The episode features several aliens (some of them even speaking English), spaceships, hypnosis, mysterious men in black, and even a laughable scream from Mulder (David Duchovny) as he lays eyes on a corpse from outer space, highlighting the unreliability of memory and how people oftentimes remember certain facts and experiences in contradictory ways. While the episode is dominated by bonkers humor, it also offers plenty of food for thought about the power of the mind as well as inexplicable phenomena.

Season 2's "The Host" is "The X-Files" at its most terrifying. In it, Mulder is sent to New Jersey to investigate the unidentified dead body of a man who was pulled into a septic system through a toilet. As the case slowly unravels, Mulder and Scully learn that there's a flukeworm-like humanoid hiding in the city's sewers, claiming victim after victim, and getting ready to reproduce. They do everything they can to stop the creature, with the hopes that this will also help them to convince the bureau to reopen the recently closed X-Files department.

Combining an eerie atmosphere with spine-chilling practical effects, "The Host" was one of those episodes that cemented the series as one of the finest horrors on television in the '90s. It showed what the writers and the rest of the crew behind the show were capable of at their best, delivering fascinating cases with strong scientific backup while also satisfying fans hungry for gore by giving them one of the most revolting monsters the small screen has ever embraced. This episode is pure nightmare fuel, counted among the most disturbing monster-of-the-week outings for a reason.

Naturally, "The X-Files" paid homage to horror cinema and literature throughout its long run on a regular basis (with various episodes), and arguably, the peak of those attempts culminated in Season 5's "The Post-Modern Prometheus." A contemporary and deliberately comical take on Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," the episode was shot in black-and-white (the one and only in the series) to recreate the style and milieu of the novel's iconic 1931 film adaptation and tell the story of a man-made monster in the small town of Albion, Indiana.

Mulder and Scully visit this place after the former receives a letter from one of the locals, a middle-aged woman and mother, claiming she was impregnated by an unknown presence while unconscious. Upon arriving, the two soon realize that this rural and close-knit community has a penchant for exaggeration and cheap sensations (like "The Jerry Springer Show"), yet the agents quickly learn that the local monster dubbed The Great Mutato is far from being myth — since they witness him grabbing food with their own eyes. In fact, he might be the making of the town's slightly insane geneticist, Dr. Pollidori (John O'Hurley).

"The Post-Modern Prometheus" is a slick and masterful homage to the classic Frankenstein story, rich in style, silly in humor, and eerily bonkers at full volume with references smartly sewn into its narrative fabric. Its final conclusion and musical finale might be the most uplifting ending the show has ever delivered. It's funny that you could argue Chris Carter did this better in 45 minutes nearly 30 years ago than Guillermo del Toro did in two and a half hours last year with "Frankenstein."

We've already talked about Season 4's "Home" as the frightening "The X-Files" episode that got banned after it aired in 1996. Rewatching it one more time, it's clear that this story is a cold-blooded, haunting, and baffling masterpiece as far as human-centered violence and deviance go in the history of "The X-Files."

The plot follows the Peacock family (three physically deformed brothers conceived in incest) who bury a newborn infant in their backyard on a stormy night, which then gets discovered by a group of kids playing baseball on the field the following day. Scully and Mulder are called to investigate the death of the baby — welcomed by the small Pennsylvania town's endearing and affable sheriff, played by Tucker Smallwood — and as they learn about the Peacocks' off-putting history that goes back for centuries, they soon will have to deal with another murder and the sickening secret that's at the core of the killings this family has likely been committing for decades, if not longer.

"Home" was another example of "The X-Files" pushing its limits and testing its boundaries on the small screen, and the result couldn't have been better — or more horrifying. While the episode was banned from reruns shown on Fox for some time, it eventually re-aired on the cable network FX and is now available to stream on Hulu.

There's a reason the Vince Gilligan-written episode "Bad Blood" of Season 5 pops up in almost every "X-Files" fan's best-of list (usually at the top) when it comes to favorites. It's hilarious, goofy, and smart, but more importantly, it gives us a firsthand account of how Mulder and Scully see each other after working together for many years. The plot of the episode is told in vastly differing POV flashbacks as the two recall a case of "classic vampirism" that happened in the small town of Chaney, Texas. The investigation reveals cows mysteriously dying with not a drop of blood left in their bodies and having fang marks, in addition to a human victim found dead in a motel, showing the same signs.

The point of the episode isn't whether they're dealing with actual vampires or not, but rather the exaggerations and inconsistencies in Mulder and Scully's accounts of seeing the other discover and react to the clues that eventually lead to the climax we see in the cold open (Mulder driving a stake into a young man's heart). As usual, they both have different theories of what or who killed the man (alongside the cows), and the way they're trying to argue and convince each other is both subtly clever and funny as hell.

Gilligan and director Cliff Bole knew exactly what buttons to push to bring out the best of the two actors, satirizing their most dominant characteristics to great effect. That combined with typical vampire lore, inexplicable events, and a mysterious outcome of the case, makes this outing a quintessential "X-Files" episode that highlights virtually everything the show is known for and revels in.