Movies Gallery The X-Files: Mulder and Scully's best moments By Kelly Connolly Updated on June 22, 2022 05:31PM EDT Trending Videos Close this video player Photo: Fox High on the list of the X-Files' lasting legacies is the relationship between Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), the believer and skeptic whose razor-sharp rapport introduced the Internet to the concept of shipping. But behind the endless wait for Mulder and Scully to get together was the unspoken fact that they already were—and had been, in some capacity, since their first case. Ahead, look back on 17 of Mulder and Scully's best moments (including that time when one of them shot the other). 01 of 17 The cemetery in the rain (Season 1, Episode 1) Fox The motel encounter launched the ship, but the rainy cemetery defined it. On their first case together, Mulder expected Scully to reject his so-crazy-it's-true theory, but he still turned and waited for her—only to find that she was actually considering his idea. This exchange established Mulder and Scully's partnership as one based not on the need for agreement but on their refusal to dismiss each other, which did more to help them find agreement in the end. And Scully was having fun! 02 of 17 Mulder wanted to trust Scully (Season 1, Episode 8) Fox Stranded in an Alaskan outpost, Scully worried that Mulder had been infected by a parasitic worm that causes violent outbursts. Before administering the antidote, she locked herself in a closet with her partner to determine whether he actually had the parasite, because she would've rather risked letting him hurt her than risk hurting him. The case was an early example of the way Mulder and Scully saved their own lives by thinking about each other—and it was by far the most electric exchange to ever involve checking someone for worms. 03 of 17 Scully shot Mulder (Season 2, Episode 25) Fox When Mulder's tap water was dosed with what might be LSD, his erratic behavior lead him to a standoff with the man who killed his father. Scully, recognizing that Mulder could be framed for his own father's murder if he pulled the trigger, shot her partner in the shoulder—and then dressed his wound, drugged him, and drove him across the country to save his life. In a testament to the pair's unconventional protectiveness, Mulder thanked her for all of it. 04 of 17 Mulder couldn't shoot Scully (Season 3, Episode 17) Fox A man who could push his will onto others pushed Mulder into a game of Russian roulette with Scully at the table. Under the influence of mind control, Mulder had no trouble aiming a gun at his own head, but he fought back when told to pull the trigger in Scully's direction, giving her time to pull a fire alarm and snap him out of it. Their partnership was designed to position them both as pawns in the FBI's game, and this was The X-Files' clearest answer to Mulder and Scully's fear that they wouldn't overcome it. 05 of 17 The conversation on the rock (Season 3, Episode 22) Fox Stuck on a rock in the middle of a lake that potentially housed a sea monster, Mulder and Scully debated the merits of cannibalism and analyzed Moby Dick, which turned personal when Mulder admitted that he sometimes wanted an excuse to settle down. The kicker to the thoughtful consideration of his own restlessness? They had been just a few feet from shore the whole time. 06 of 17 The hospital hug (Season 4, Episode 14) Fox The first episode to face Scully's cancer head-on found its resolution in a hospital hallway, where Scully decided to return to work—in part because there was no conventional treatment for a disease that might've been rooted in her abduction. After all, it was the best shot she had at finding a cure. Her personal life was inseparable from her partnership with Mulder, and, going by his declaration that the truth would "save both of [them]," Mulder's life was inseparable from hers. 07 of 17 Scully built a campfire (Season 5, Episode 4) Fox When Scully and an injured Mulder had to stick it out in the woods until morning, they veered from jokes about the Flintstones to the coy offer to share a single sleeping bag to, somehow, a discussion on what it meant to face your own mortality. The alternately light and heavy conversation came to an unexpected end when Mulder asked Scully to sing to him as she cradled him in her lap—and she chose Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World." 08 of 17 Mulder asked Scully to dance (Season 5, Episode 5) Fox After catching a modern-day Frankenstein's monster with a soft spot for Cher, the partners delayed the monster's arrest long enough to take him to a concert, where Mulder asked Scully to dance. Was the scene, which came in a black-and-white episode bookended by comic book cover pages, real within the world of the show? Debatable. But it was lasting. 09 of 17 Mulder and Scully got their stories straight (Season 5, Episode 12) Fox Vince Gilligan's slapstick "Bad Blood" may not be the most romantic hour on this list, but it is one of the sharpest deconstructions of Mulder and Scully's bond. The partners decided to settle a disagreement over a recent case by retelling it to each other, giving Duchovny and Anderson the chance to spoof their own characters as we saw each version of events play out. Inspired by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, "Bad Blood" treated Mulder and Scully like a married sitcom couple, unearthing not only how differently they saw the world but how much they enjoyed sparring about it. 10 of 17 Mulder called Scully his one in 5 billion (Season 5, Episode 19) Fox Discredited for his belief that a corporate boss is a literal monster, Mulder begged Scully to believe him from a psychiatric hospital bed: "Nobody else on this whole damn planet does or ever will. You're my one in 5 billion." The fact that Scully eventually proved him right was tempered by the tragedy underlying their partnership: Mulder had no one else. 11 of 17 The hallway (The X-Files: Fight the Future) The franchise's first feature film hinged on this scene, in which Mulder, faced with the possibility that Scully could've left the FBI, eloquently thanked her for all of her rational, scientific naysaying. Their partnership corrected its own imbalance: The nature of the story meant that Mulder was always right, but he would never be able to prove it without Scully. His confession not only changed her mind but lead to an almost-kiss, which, of course, was interrupted by a bee. 12 of 17 Mulder told Scully that he loved her (Season 6, Episode 3) Fox After a Wizard of Oz-esque trip to a 1939 ocean liner populated by alternate versions of familiar faces, Mulder woke up in the hospital and—on a cocktail of painkillers—told Scully that he loved her. The only "I love you" ever exchanged between the pair was met on Scully's end with a sigh and an "Oh, brother"—but, notably, no surprise. She already knew. 13 of 17 Mulder and Scully exchanged gifts (Season 6, Episode 6) Fox On Christmas Eve, Mulder dragged Scully to a haunted house, where a pair of old, married ghosts (played by Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin) tried to trick them into committing murder-suicide as a "lovers' pact." When that failed, the ghosts made the partners believe that they'd shot each other. Mulder and Scully recovered from that illusion with a gift exchange and the reassurance that wanting to spend time together did not require killing each other. 14 of 17 Mulder and Scully played baseball (Season 6, Episode 19) Fox Mulder took a break for a night and called Scully to the local baseball diamond to teach her how to swing a bat—a "very early or very late birthday present" that came with its fair share of innuendo. The exchange, one of the series' happiest and most overtly flirtatious, capped off Mulder's realization that not everything has to serve a greater purpose: Enjoying something is purpose enough on its own. 15 of 17 Mulder and Scully were each other's constants (Season 7, Episode 2) Fox When Scully stopped by Mulder's place to see how he was recovering from unauthorized brain surgery (not his first), he wound up talking her through a crisis of faith (not her first). Hands on each other's faces, the partners affirmed that they were each other's "touchstones" in a job that left room for no other certainty. 16 of 17 Scully introduced Mulder to baby William (Season 8, Episode 21) Fox Maybe the most conventionally romantic scene of the bunch was also a nod to how unconventional Mulder and Scully were: They eased into having a baby (and kissed about it) without changing anything else about the way they operated. When Mulder called their relationship "the truth [they] both know," he might as well have refuted the idea that The X-Files had ever been about anything else. 17 of 17 Scully and Mulder went on the run (Season 9, Episode 19) Fox In what was no longer The X-Files' television finale, Scully broke Mulder out of federal custody when he was framed for murder, and they disappeared. We left them off the grid in a Roswell motel room, in a scene that began by echoing a similar exchange from the pilot, but shifted when he joined her on the bed. Scully then shared Mulder's belief in an alien conspiracy, but the fact that she and Mulder still insisted that "maybe there's hope" was anything but new.