By Kaylynn Kasandra

Once again it seems as though we have taken a detour from the season’s main plot. To be honest, I didn’t mind. I found this episode to be quite entertaining. I liked the feel of it and found it very humorous. It parodied so many conspiracy theories, the main one being the Mandela effect. And the way they pulled that off was priceless! I really enjoyed the crossover with the guy who plays Richard from People of Earth. He is the spastic one of the Alien abduction support group in that show, and that same spastic energy crossed over to the X-files. The idea that neither Mulder nor Scully remember him as their partner was too funny to me. Even his name could be a play off of the Mandela effect: Richard and Reggie are quite close. Regardless, the lighthearted way they poked fun at all the internet conspiracy theorists throughout the episode was amusing.

I have seen many similar discussions from the episode on all corners of the internet. Many of the conspiracy theorists even make the same arguments. They claim Mandela effects are caused by parallel universes, corporate and/or government mind control, alien cover ups… you know the stuff. Honestly, I could fall down that rabbit hole for hours. Once you start reading up on it all, it’s pretty hard to walk away. And there are so many people who make the same claims from all parts of the world; it’s insane. Hard to know what the true root of the phenomenon is, but I find it quite interesting regardless. It would be pretty cool if perhaps there was some truth to the parallel universe theory, as that seems to be the only benevolent answer. Or is it that the answer is so simple people don’t even want to believe it? Could it just be a simple answer of statistics? Given the large population of the world it wouldn’t be out of the realm of the possibility for large populations to share similar misinformation, thus creating doubt. Honestly, I like to take the stance of: I can’t rule anything out without proof. I can’t say one way or the other, I can however admit it’s quite strange.

I absolutely agree with Dr. They though; you don’t need some complex machine to manipulate the masses. All you need is the internet and one naysayer to help create doubt. At that point human nature will most definitely takeover. Fake news, conspiracies, silly memes, they all spread like wildfire on the internet. 99.9% of the time people won’t take the time to actually read past the headlines of things let alone dig into the research of what is being said. It’s so easy to use this to your advantage if you wish to spread a message, and that’s kind of scary. People are far too impressionable… but that’s a rant for another day.

There were so many funny moments in this episode for me. I absolutely loved the silly 50’s version of an alien. The speech said alien made at the end of the episode was a great social commentary, as was most of the episode. I can’t say if I were an alien I wouldn’t have said the same. Humans aren’t always the most compassionate or empathetic of creatures and we tend to destroy. I would ban humans from coming to my planet or universe too. Like Scully said, they just don’t like us. Scully also made a great point at the end. It’s important to sometimes just take things as they are and remember how things were. It’s so easy to get swept up in the insanity that is going on all over the internet and the world around us. I really appreciated this lighthearted approach to all of it though. It’s really fun watching them have so much fun with the revival and not make it all so serious. That’s one of the best things about David Duchovny, he is great with his delivery. I can’t wait for next week! It seems we will be getting a lot more answers about William.