Jeffrey Spender - Character Arc

Character Arc

Spender was a skeptic who was assigned to The X-Files after Fox Mulder's forced leave. Spender is the son of the "Cigarette Smoking Man", and the "Cigarette Smoking Man's" ex-wife, multiple abductee Cassandra Spender. Heavily involved in the Syndicate at that time, the "Cigarette Smoking Man" abandoned the family when Spender was 12 years old. Subsequently, his mother was driven insane by what she claims were multiple alien abductions. Shortly after Samantha Mulder was abducted and then returned, Jeffrey and Samantha were raised together by his father in California. Spender met Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in 1998. The same year, the "Cigarette Smoking Man" began sending him letters; however Spender returned them unopened. After his father set fire on The X-Files in "The End", Spender with Agent Diana Fowley start working on the X-Files. Spender got orders from the "Cigarette Smoking Man" to push and eventually get Mulder and Scully fired from the FBI, which he eventually does in "Two Fathers". Later on he reinstates Mulder and Scully to The X-Files but is shot in the head and apparently killed by his father in "One Son".

Three years later it is revealed in "William", that he survived the gunshot, but was subjected to horribly disfiguring experiments at the hand of his father. Posing as Mulder, he infiltrated Scully's house, and injected William with a magnetite substance to seemingly "cure" the baby of his telekinetic powers. The motivation or repercussions of his actions are never fully explained. He testified for the defense during Mulder's murder trial in "The Truth". He also revealed during the trial that Teena Mulder was having an affair with the "Cigarette Smoking Man", and that he and Fox Mulder are half-brothers. A DNA test conducted on a disfigured Spender in the episode "William" initially led agents Scully, Doggett and Reyes to believe he was Mulder thus lending further credence to Spender's claim that both he and Mulder are the children of the "Cigarette Smoking Man".