List of MOTW characters

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On the 1993-2002 television series, The X-Files, there developed two main types of episodes. "Mytharc" episodes were recognized as the canon "mythology" of the series, comprising the central storyline concerning extraterrestrial life and a conspiracy to hide it, while "MOTW" (Monster of the Week; also "MoW") came to denote the rest of the episodes, a majority of each season. Episodes of this type dealt with all kinds of paranormal phenomena — mutants, science fiction technologies, horror monsters, and comedic episodes that parodied these genres, other TV shows, and even The X-Files itself. Despite the lack of continuity and development of the main characters in some of these episodes, others have ties to the X-Files mythology. A number of "monster of the week" characters became notable and were later referenced by other episodes and by fans of the show.

For characters that were not monsters of the week, see also: List of recurring characters from The X-Files

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
  • Eugene Victor Tooms: Tooms appeared in the first MOTW episode, "Squeeze". He is a mutant, capable of stretching and contorting his body to an extent that would be unnatural for a normal human. Every 30 years, Tooms came out of hibernation in order to attain five human livers. In the episode "Tooms", Mulder tracked him to his nest underneath a shopping mall, and when he attacked Mulder, Tooms was crushed to death by an escalator. He is one of only three MOTW characters to star in more than one episode.
  • Luther Lee Boggs: A serial killer from North Carolina whom Mulder's profile helped catch. He was to be executed via gas chamber but received a stay of execution. Boggs soon developed an ability to channel spirits and demons. Mulder, however, did not believe Boggs had this ability, and thought Boggs was simply trying to use him and Scully to bargain for his life. Scully initially shared Mulder's view; however, Boggs managed to cause Scully to doubt this belief by appearing to her as Mulder, and her recently deceased father, and relating to her private information about her own life, and the case she was working on. The executive stay, however, was soon lifted and Boggs was summarily executed. Appeared in the episode "Beyond the Sea", and portrayed by Brad Dourif. The character was based off of the real-life serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas, and the tattoos "KISS" and "KILL" on Boggs' knuckles are an homage to the fictional serial killer, Reverend Harry Powell.
  • The Arctic Worm: The first of many apparently extraterrestrial biological agents which can endanger and control humans in The X-Files, the worms in first season episode "Ice" are speculated to have been brought to the ice of Alaska by the ancient crash of a meteor in the Arctic. This is also the apparent origin of the "black oil" that was later central to the show's "mythology"; however, these worms were never directly related to the oil, an alien virus known as Purity. Instead, they bear more resemblance to the substance in the film The Thing on which the episode was partly based. The worms can enter through a cut and quickly take full physical and psychological control of a person by attaching to the hypothalamus gland, causing them to kill themselves or others, or inducing extreme paranoia, as seen in the episode, where Mulder and Scully threaten each other under the possible influence of the agent. Similar effects were also shown in "Firewalker", but the life form there was native to the subterranean regions of earth.
  • The Eves: In first season episode "Eve", a series of similar gruesome murders have links to apparently unrelated, but identical looking, girls throughout the United States. These girls can all be traced to a secret experiment which created them (i.e. Eve 3, Eve 6), and their primary goal is their own genetic survival. The "Eves" in the episode kill their foster parents and entrap Mulder and Scully, often uttering the line "we just knew". At the end they are seen entering a prison facility with genetically identical adult women subject to the same experiments.
  • Flukeman: Flukeman was introduced in the second season episode, "The Host". It is a tapeworm-like humanoid, who lived in sewers. Flukeman would bite a human and inject a small fluke, which would after a time, kill its host. Mulder eventually found the creature in a sewer, and he seemingly killed it. At the end of the episode, however, Flukeman is seen still barely alive. The creature has a few references in later episodes, and apparently the Flukeman case is not a particular favorite of Scully's.
  • Augustus Cole: A Vietnam veteran known for his habit of quoting the Bible, Cole was one of an elite squad of soldiers in the episode "Sleepless" who are revealed to have been secretly operated on by the military to be able to go permanently without sleep. During the war, they were employed to scour the countryside for Viet Cong fighters, but as a result of increased levels of violence due to their condition, massacred whole villages. During their extended, torturous waking periods of decades, Cole alone among them has developed the ability to project dream-like states into reality. He targets doctors at the facility who engineered him, and eventually is shot by Mulder's new FBI partner Krycek.
  • Kristen Kilar: In second season episode "3", Kilar is a member of "the trinity", a group of "vampires" in Los Angeles. Kilar, played by Perry Reeves (Duchovny's real life girlfriend at the time), becomes sexually involved with Mulder, who is investigating his first and only case without Scully, who was abducted in the previous episode.
  • Mrs. Paddock: Full name Phyllis Paddock, she is a substitute teacher at Milford, New Hampshire's Crowley High School in the second season episode "Die Hand Die Verletzt". Thinking the school has been possessed by satanic forces summoned by students' "devil music" and occult gatherings in the woods, the town calls out Mulder and Scully, but the school's reactionary parent-teacher association is actually overrun with Satanist believers. However, they are ultimately powerless against the occult magic of the mysteriously arrived Paddock, who appears responsible for most of the events in the episode. The end is ambiguous but suggests Paddock may have been trying to help protect the students from adults with no moral values. She also rescues Mulder and Scully from being sacrificed by the PTC.
  • Donald "Donnie" Pfaster: First appearing in the season 2 episode, "Irresistible", Donnie is a reclusive necrophiliac who murders prostitutes. Mulder and Scully are soon on the case, during which, Donnie follows and kidnaps Scully. Mulder manages to track him down and save Scully, who was relatively unharmed, but emotionally shaken by the experience. About 5 years later, in "Orison", Donnie, with the help of a prison reverand, escapes and goes after "the one who got away," Scully. He soon finds out where she lives and attacks Scully at her apartment. Mulder arrives later by chance, moments before Scully fatally shoots Donnie. He is the second of only three MOTW characters to star in two separate episodes.
  • Dr. Blockhead & The Conundrum: A circus act duo consisting of a human blockhead and a carnival geek, Mulder and Scully meet the team during an investigation into circus related deaths. In addition to classic human blockhead acts, like being able to apparently drive nails into his chest and nasal cavity without killing himself, Dr. Blockhead trains with a variation of the Sun Dance, and is also an escape artist. According to him, he was born in Yemen, where he trained with yogis, fakirs, and swamis, and learned, among other things, how to draw his testicles up into his abdomen. In actuality, Dr. Blockhead's real name is Jeffrey Swaim, and he was born in Milwaukee. The Conundrum is a bald, jigsaw puzzle tattooed man, who sports only a loincloth and rarely speaks. He is a carnival geek, meaning that for his act, though also apparently in his spare time as well, he eats live and dead animals, rocks, light bulbs, battery cables, etc. He even eats the killer parasitic twin from the episode the pair appear in, "Humbug".
  • Chester Banton: In second season episode "Soft Light", Banton is a physicist (played by Tony Shalhoub) who is accidentally enclosed in his particle accelerator, turning his own shadow into dark matter. Banton tries to avoid public places with harsh, bright light where this might prove dangerous to others, but nevertheless kills several of his own friends, and police officers, unintentionally. His shadow reduces people to burn spots on the ground, leading Mulder to compare it with spontaneous human combustion. Thanks to Mulder's attempts to gain information from his informant about Banton's condition, it is revealed Banton has been captured by a secret government conspiracy overseen by Mr. X, who are conducting their own experiments on him.
  • Darren Peter Oswald: In third season episode "D.P.O." (Oswald's initials), the title character played by Giovanni Ribisi is an immature car mechanic who can channel his frustration into controlling lightning. Oswald, a video gamer and punk and heavy metal fan who hangs out with his arcade-owner friend played by Jack Black, still harbors a crush on his high school teacher, which inflames his passions and causes the deaths of several people struck by lightning.
  • Clyde Bruckman: The eponymous insurance salesman from season 3's "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". Mr. Bruckman, an elder, cynical, sarcastic man, lives in Minnesota, and apart from his otherwise uneventful existence, has the psychic ability to forsee a person's death. This ability, much to his chagrin and disgust, only allows him to foretell deaths, and he doesn't understand how his foresight works and is sometimes unaware of when his visions pop up. Investigating a case of a serial killer who targets psychics, Mulder and Scully meet Bruckman after he discovers a corpse. During their conversations, Bruckman relates to Scully how he will die, and also hints that Mulder will pass on by way of "autoerotic asphyxiation." He was a big fan of The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly, and after their deaths in 1959, acquired his prognostication ability. He commits suicide at the end of the episode. Played by Peter Boyle, who won an Emmy Award for the role in 1996.
  • Robert Patrick "Pusher" Modell: A self described ronin, Modell had a unique ability to alter perceptions and influence people, which he utilized to carry out hits. During the manhunt for Modell, Mulder stops Modell, though not before succumbing to his power and nearly killing himself and Scully. Modell reappears later on, and although he is actually out to stop another killer, he is shot by Skinner before this is learned, and is later killed by the person he was after. Appeared in "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari", making him one of three MOTW characters to feature prominently in two different episodes (along with Tooms and Pfaster).
  • Big Blue: A mysterious lake monster in third season episode "Quagmire", Big Blue turns out to have been either a large alligator or a prehistoric aquatic dinosaur that was able to survive for millennia in Georgia's Lake Okobogee. Scully's dog Queequeg is killed by the monster.
  • The Peacock Brothers: Edmund, George, and Sherman, are brothers from the Peacock clan, and live in 19th century conditions on a broken down farm in Home, Pennsylvania. Edmund is actually George and Sherman's brother and father. Incest has become so rampant in the Peacock clan that the remaining family members are severely physically deformed, and further reproduction has become difficult. Their mother, an amputee, is kept in the dark under a bed, on a kind of moving rack. During Mulder and Scully's investigation, a few local police officers are killed by the brothers. Mulder and Scully are eventually able to break into the booby-trapped Peacock home, where George and Sherman are killed during the confrontation. Edmund escapes with his mother, and both depart to keep the Peacock line going elsewhere. The notorious episode they appear in, "Home", has a viewer discretion warning, and is rated TV MA, unlike other episodes which are rated TV 14. "Home" was also kept out of syndication for three years after it's initial airing.
  • Gerry Schnauz: Played by Pruitt Taylor Vince, Schnauz performs frontal "icepick lobotomies" on a series of women he has abducted, thinking he will cure their inner demons or "unrest" (in German, "Unruhe", the fourth season episode's title). Schnauz works as a construction foreman in Michigan, and also has the ability to project his fantasies into photographs, a paranormal process Mulder describes as "thoughtography".
  • Ed Jerse and his tattoo: Played by Rodney Rowland in the fourth season's "Never Again", Jerse is a recently-divorced young man who appears to be controlled by his winking tattoo of a woman, voiced by Jodie Foster. The tattoo degrades Jerse's self-esteem at work and incites him with misogynistic threats. Jerse ultimately murders a neighbor and burns the body, before randomly meeting up with Agent Scully, who is in Philadelphia investigating a case while Mulder takes a vacation to Graceland in Memphis, TN. Jerse becomes intimate with Scully, who is also undergoing a crisis of confidence in her career and personal life, and Scully also gets a tattoo of an ouroboros. Scully spends the night with Jerse but evades danger. In the end, it is suggested that the tattoo may have had psychotropic rye in its dye.
  • Leonard Morris Betts: Real name Albert Tanner, Leonard was a Pittsburgh EMT, and a mutant. His body was internally riddled with cancer, but this was actually his normal state of being. Leonard's body, as a result, could regenerate any lost body part, even a new head. To sustain his ability, he had to bathe in providone iodine, as well as consume cancer, which he was able to obtain through his job. To keep his condition secret, Leonard was forced to kill any person who learned about it. During the X-file case on him, he attacked Scully, but was killed after she electrocuted him with a pair of defibrillators on full power. Before he attacked Scully, he told her "I'm sorry... but you've got something I need," quietly revealing to Scully that she had cancer. Portrayed by Paul McCrane, of ER fame.
  • Edward H. "Eddie" Van Blundht, Jr.: A self-described "born loser", Eddie is an inconspicuous janitor, living in a small town in West Virginia. In "Small Potatoes", Mulder and Scully head there to investigate why 5 women within the past 3 months have given birth to babies with vestigial tails. They soon learn that Eddie is the father of all the babies, and that he was also born with a tail. However, a more surprising find to Mulder and Scully, is that Eddie's body is covered with striated muscle, which allows him to transform his appearance to that of virtually anyone (explaining how the women mistook Eddie for their husbands, or in one case, Mark Hamill). Using his ability, Eddie manages to impersonate Mulder, and heads back to D.C. with Scully. While there, he visits Scully with a bottle of wine, attempting to seduce her. The real Mulder eventually shows up, and promptly arrests Eddie, who was less than an inch from kissing Scully. Played by series writer/actor, Darin Morgan.
  • The Great Mutato: A real life "Frankenstein's monster" in season 5 episode "Post-Modern Prometheus," The Great Mutato is also the name of a comic book character created by the character Izzy Berkowitz in the episode. The so-called Great Mutato is alternately a source of fear, controversy and pride in the Indiana small town, whose citizens hope an appearance on The Jerry Springer Show will bring them fame. Although the character is seen in silhouette several times, he only appears fully at the end of the episode, played by Chris Owens (who previously played a young version of the Cigarette Smoking Man and would later play Jeffrey Spender on the show). His physical deformities are similar to those of John Merrick, "The Elephant Man." The Great Mutato enjoys watching the film Mask, about a teenaged boy with similar physical defects, and is consequently a large fan of Cher, who stars in the movie as the boy's mother. It is ultimately revealed that The Great Mutato was created not by genetic "mad scientist" Dr. Pollidori, as viewers were initially led to believe, but by Pollidori's inexperienced father, thus resulting in his physical disability. The Great Mutato has been kept in solitary confinement since he was born (over 20 years previously) without the younger Pollidori's knowledge and only rumours of his existence. The unexplained events which draw Mulder and Scully for the episode take place when the compassionate senior Pollidori tries to rectify his mistake in creating the Great Mutato, by secretly allowing the lonely "monster" to drug and impregnate several women in the town in the hopes of creating a "bride". The implication is that the town is in fact already made up of several children of such paternity. The Great Mutato, after tearfully explaining himself and earning the town's understanding, is about to be taken into custody on charges of rape, whereupon the episode has a false ending: Mulder angrily asks to speak to the writer (referencing Izzy, the writer of the comic book about the Great Mutato, and also breaking the fourth wall to reference Chris Carter, the writer of the episode and the creator of The X-Files, known for its generally dark tone), whereupon a musical montage begins and The Great Mutato is seen ecstatically attending a Cher concert with Scully and Mulder who share a dance to "Walking in Memphis."
  • The AI in "Kill Switch": In fifth season episode "Kill Switch", an artificial intelligence menaces a group of computer experts, hackers and Mulder ans Scully. The concept was previously addressed in first season episode "Ghost in the Machine", however, that AI was much more primitive, limited to controlling one building. In "Kill Switch", the AI executes complex tactical moves, and is able to target its "enemies" remotely using a satellite GPS system, as well as placing them within virtual reality worlds. The episode was written by Tom Maddox and William Gibson, who was a creator of many of these concepts in his novels.
  • Patrick Crump: A Nevada man subject to a strange, potentially infectious illness in the sixth season episode "Drive", he steals a car in his futile efforts to save himself and his family, and eventually holds Mulder hostage at gunpoint and forces him to drive west. Crump, who harbors an anti-government and anti-Semitic paranoia, has in fact been affected by a secret military program whose testing hardware lies under his residence. Signals emmitted by the devices resonated in the inner ears of Crump and his wife, forcing them into constant movement at the risk of an explosion inside their heads.
  • Josh "Ex" Exley: Played by Jesse L. Martin in the episode "The Unnatural", Exley is an exceptional baseball player in the Negro Leagues circa 1949, who turns out to be an extraterrestrial who arrived in the Roswell UFO incident. The episode, the first written and directed by David Duchovny, is mostly set in the past and follows Exley as he is torn between his passion for baseball and his desire not to be exposed, leading him to take the form of an African American player in the racially segregated era, due to his lower profile. However, when Exley begins to attract wider attention for his abilities, he comes into conflict with other members of his "race" (including regular mythology characters such as the Alien Bounty Hunter) and is killed. Having somehow achieved human form, he bleeds red blood. The story is retold to Mulder in the present by the twin brother of X-Files founder Agent Arthur Dales, who witnessed the events as a young white agent assigned to protect Exley.
  • Phillip Padgett: a reclusive writer who is obsessed with Dana Scully. He is featured in the Sixth Season Episode "Milagro." Padgett moved next door to Fox Mulder in order to be closer to Scully (no apartments were available in her building). During the episode, Padgett is writing a novel that gives the details of several murders before they occur. It turns out that one of the characters created by Padgett is the killer. Padgett ultimately burns his novel to save Scully from the killer.
  • The Fear Monster: In seventh season episode "X-COPS" (a stylistic crossover with the reality show COPS), a "fear monster" threatens Willow Park, a fictional area of South Los Angeles populated by terrified residents, prostitutes, crack houses, cops on the job, an eccentric gay couple, and the semi-famous Mulder and Scully, reluctantly followed by camera crews. Mulder initially suspects a werewolf attack because he finds all the signs of one, while a police sketch artist finds other inhabitants apparently saw Freddy Kreuger. Scully is conducting an autopsy when her assistant drops dead of the Hanta virus she so dreads, and later she is threatened by her own fear of the camera itself. This episode suggests that the "monster" is seen differently by each person and kills each differently, depending on their own fears, similar to a theme of the Stephen King novel IT and the Boggart of the Harry Potter series. The theme was also used in the third season X-Files episode "Wetwired", where a subliminal signal hidden in TV reception caused different paranoid visions in each viewer, and in "Blood", a second season episode where these fears were prompted by digital text displays.


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