The Truth (The X-Files) - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"The Truth" was originally aired on the Fox network on May 19, 2002, and became the most-watched episode of the ninth season, receiving the season's highest Nielsen ratings. Nielsen ratings are audience measurement system that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States. "The Truth" earned a household rating of 7.5, meaning that it was seen by 7.5 percent of the nation's estimated households. It was viewed by 7.91 million households and gathered a total of 13 million viewers in the United States alone. On the date of its airing, the episode ranked third in its timeslot, behind the season finale of Survivor: Marquesas and the heavily promoted reunion of The Cosby Show. "The Truth", however, placed ahead of the season finale of The Practice. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the episode made its first appearance on Sky1 on September 26, 2002 and received 1.03 million viewers, placing The X-Files second in the top ten broadcasts for Sky1 for that week, behind The Simpsons. The episode was included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 4 – Super Soldiers, a DVD collection that contains installments involved with the alien "Super Soldiers" arc.

The entry received mixed reviews by critics; the main reason for criticism was that, instead of creating a conclusion, the episode created new questions for the audience. Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, gave the episode a scathing review and awarded it one star out of five. The two, despite calling the opening "promising", derided the episode's ending—especially the revelation of alien colonization of December 22, 2012—writing, "is this really what the series was about?" Furthermore, Shearman and Pearson concluded that the problem with the episode was that the show, which he called "brilliant—frequently, truly brilliant" decided "to define itself in the summing up" with the episode, which did not answer very many questions. UGO named the episode the fourteenth "Worst Series Finale" and wrote that the episode—and the show's eighth and ninth seasons by extension—were negatively affected by the series' lack of a defining plot line. The article noted that, while the episode claimed to wrap up the story arcs for the series, "the trial of Mulder ultimately resulted in very little satisfying payoff to the series' overarching mysteries". A review from The New York Times, after the premiere of "The Truth", said of the show: "The most imaginative show on television has finally reached the limits of its imagination."

Not all reviews were critical. In 2011, the finale was ranked number twenty-two on the TV Guide Network special, TV's Most Unforgettable Finales, in which the various episodes were discussed by industry experts and television critics. Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations, wrote a rather positive review of the episode. He noted that, while the episode "told us nothing of significance" regarding the "big picture" mythology story arc, the chance to see Mulder and Scully together one last time resulted in "an exquisite Mulder-Scully moment". He was particularly pleased with the final scene, noting that it was an appropriate conclusion; he called it "fitting", as well as "wonderful". Kessenich maintained that, were it not for the return of Duchovny, "nobody would have given a damn about the end of this series."