Samantha Mulder
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| The X-Files character | |
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| Samantha Mulder | |
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| Affiliated with | None |
| First appearance | "Conduit" |
| Last appearance | "The Truth" (archive footage) |
| Portrayed by | Vanessa Morley (child), Mimi Paley (child - episode "Closure"), Megan Leitch (adult) |
Samantha Ann Mulder (born November 21, 1965) is a fictional character in the television series The X-Files. She is the sister of FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder; her parents are Bill Mulder and Teena Mulder.
In November 1973, Samantha was abducted by aliens from the Mulder family home on Martha's Vinyard, when she was 8 years old. Fox Mulder, who was 12 years old at the time, began his obsession with extraterrestrials as a result of this incident. Much of the show focused on Mulder's efforts to discover what happened to his sister.
She first appears in the second season, "Colony," as an adult. She claims that she lost her memory after her abduction and was adopted by a new family, but she has been regaining her memory gradually during the last year (before finally meeting her own family and Fox in "Colony"). However, this person was later revealed to be one of several adult Samantha clones, all of whom were probably killed by the Alien Bounty Hunter.
In season 4's "Herrenvolk", Jeremiah Smith takes Mulder to a covert bee husbandry facility in remote Alberta. There, he finds a group of Samantha clones, all no older than the day the real Samantha disappeared, working on the alien colonists' and Syndicate's joint project of spreading the Black Oil. The facility was soon after destroyed, and the clones were presumably killed by the Alien Bounty Hunter.
Later in the fourth season, in "Paper Hearts", Mulder becomes convinced that Samantha was kidnapped and murdered by John L. Roche. Roche is a serial killer whom Mulder previously profiled, and helped lock up for the murder of thirteen young girls. His signature was the removal of a heart-shaped piece of cloth from each girl's clothing. Through a dream, Mulder finds another girl, and the discovery of the missing "paper hearts" reveals that two are still missing, for a total of sixteen. Roche gives the location of one, but since Mulder kills Roche during a standoff at the end of the episode, the other is never found. Roche manipulates Mulder into believing that Samantha is one of his victims, and Mulder takes him to a house and gets him to go over the events of the evening Samantha disappeared. Mulder catches him in the lie, revealing that they're in the wrong house.
In 1997, during the fifth season episode "Redux II", the Cigarette Smoking Man introduces Mulder to a woman who he claims is, and who herself believes to be, Samantha. She tells Mulder that she has children of her own, thought that her mother had died some time ago, and believed Cigarette Smoking Man to be her father. She leaves abruptly during the meeting, and is never seen again. According to Cassandra Spender, she was another clone.
In The X Files (film), Mulder mentions Samantha. While in a bar, he gets drunk and monologues to the person behind the counter, saying, "They call me Spooky. Spooky Mulder, whose sister was abducted by aliens when he was just a kid and who now chases after little green men with a badge and a gun."
Samantha's storyline is presumably resolved in the Season 7 episode, "Closure". In that episode, Scully watches a 1989 tape in which Mulder undergoes hypnotic regression therapy, which another agent describes as "garden-variety compensatory abduction fantasy" which feeds Mulder's "unconscious hope that his sister is still alive". Later, with the help of a medium, Mulder discovers Samantha's diary, which states that in 1979 at age 14, while living in California with Jeffrey Spender, she was the subject of numerous tests at the hands of the Cigarette Smoking Man. Unable to bear the testing any longer, Samantha ran away and was eventually admitted to a hospital. Arbutus Ray, the admitting nurse from the hospital, tells Mulder about the young girl. Ray adds that a group of men (one of whom seems to be the Cigarette Smoking Man) came to the hospital to claim the girl, only to find that she had disappeared from her locked hospital room. Ray also describes how she had a vision that was eerily similar to others', who had also lost children in a similar fashion. It is revealed that Samantha was taken by "spiritual intervention" beings called "Walk-ins", which save souls from painful fates. While in the nearby woods later, Mulder has a dreamlike vision and is briefly reunited with Samantha's spirit. After Mulder returns, Scully asks if he is alright. Mulder replies "I'm fine. I'm free," suggesting that he, like several of the other parents whose children have disappeared, accepts that Samantha's soul is in "a better place".
It has been speculated that Cigarette Smoking Man could be Mulder's and/or Samantha's father as Mulder share similar DNA as Jeffrey Spender as seen in "William". (See Cigarette Smoking Man for further details.)
Samantha Mulder was played by Vanessa Morley (child) and Megan Leitch (adult), and by Mimi Paley in the 7th season episode "Closure".
[edit] Inconsistencies
There exist a few inconsistencies about when exactly Samantha died, or if she is even dead. In 1994, in "End Game", the Alien Bounty Hunter tells Mulder, "She's alive... can you die now?" About one year later, while Mulder was unconscious, a Navajo ritual, the Blessing Way, was performed on him, during which he saw an apparition of his father, who had died recently. Bill told Fox that, wherever he was, he could not find Samantha there. In 1999, Cassandra Spender tells Mulder that Samantha is still alive. The 7th season episode "Closure", which takes place in 2000, shows that she died, taken by Walk-ins, in 1979. In the original May 19, 2002 broadcast of the series finale "The Truth", Jeffrey Spender testifies at Mulder's trial that Samantha died in 1987. However, this is probably not a plot inconsistency, but a production error; the line of dialogue is corrected and edited in syndicated reruns as "1979," although on the DVD the line remains as "1987."
[edit] Appearances
Samantha Mulder Appears in the Following Episodes:
Season 1
- "Conduit"
- "Miracle Man"
Season 2
- "Little Green Men" (flashback)
- "Colony"
- "End Game"
Season 4
- "Herrenvolk"
- "Paper Hearts"
- "Demons"
Season 5
- "Redux II"
Season 7
- "Sein Und Zeit"
- "Closure"
Season 9
- "The Truth" (flashback)
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