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randomfoggytiger · 1 year

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The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part VIII): Tena, Amor Fati, and Who's the Daddy

Tena's absence heavily marks Mulder's life post-Demons, stretching through the end of S4 and into all of S5 and S6. The incredibly close and traumatized bond she's shared with her son is shattered after his confrontation; and she reacts to this new schism like she has every other trauma in her life: denial, outrageous anger, and silent avoidance. This neglect contributes to Mulder's apathetic nihilism after Scully's recovery, slowly (and unknowingly for him) inserting a wedge in his and Scully's relationship that Diana Fowley tries to split wide open. Thankfully, Mulder is able to recover ground in S6; but the effects of her distance linger, leading up to her reemergence in The Sixth Extinction: Amor Fati.

The Aftermath of Demons

During Gethsemane-Redux II, Mulder has no emotional support outside of Scully like he had before: in End Game, he had his mother to tuck in. In The Blessing Way and Paper Hearts, Tena cooed at him and rewarded his visits with love and affection (she started to do so in Demons; but his confrontation and accusations turned her spigot of affection off.) When Mulder hits his lowest, his mind has already vetoed Tena as a source of support, having no one to stand between himself and his gun other than the few days or weeks Scully has left on this earth (not a powerful motivator.)

He “commits suicide” and Scully is called in to identify his body-- Tena never comes, never identifies, never approaches the situation at all. We’re not given any information on how she’s processing the news-- aggrieved and holed up, heartbroken, at home like Anasazi-The Blessing Way; or emotionally numb and ignoring any and all calls or news about her son-- but it’s safe to say that’s pretty telling and horrific to do to your own child, especially if the fault is all of your own making.

During all of the emotional upheaval of Redux II-- CSM producing Samantha for her brother, laying out a tasty proposition for him, then getting shot while Mulder exposes Raush’s connections with the FBI higher-ups, and (of course) losing Scully then almost saving her then losing her again then miraculously witnessing her recovery-- he does not once mention his mother, and she does not once check up on him. It’s a repeat of his relationship with his father, one he didn’t see happening with his emotionally-available mother.

During S5, Tena continues to be absent from Mulder’s life. It’s really a melancholy season: Tena is gone from his life, leaving Mulder to solely rely on a woman whose life is tied to a mind-controlling chip in her neck. Not only that, but he has to watch her life fall apart at the hands of the men his father worked with: men who extracted her ova, and callously used it to create a hybrids-daughter who can’t survive without being treated like a lab rat every day of her lives. Every action he takes in S5 led to a swift downfall; and Scully has to salvage the two of them constantly from his repeated mistakes and stubborn resistance to her gut instincts about aliens and God. By the end of the season, both of them are burnt out-- literally, when CSM destroys their office.

Again, his mother remains absent and unresponsive.

An important note: Scully uses his mother (and sister) to call back Mulder from the brink in Kitsunegari, stalling off his shooting rampage long enough to save both of them and stop Linda Bowman.

In FTF, Tena does NOT appear to support her son when he is hospitalized for a gunshot wound, leaving him to the care of his Three Stooges' friends and his boss. When he dips to Antarctica, she doesn’t seem to worry or care that her son has gone MIA ; or even worry about any additional bodily traumas and recovery time he has stacked on his plate. There is no response from what would have been a second hospital call in as many days.

During S6, Tena does not appear ONCE. Mulder has learned from Redux II onward that he has been effectively cut from her life; and has, by this point, grown used to her distance. Mulder doesn’t seek her out during his "toilet brush" detail at the hands of Kersh; instead, pouring all of his energy solely into Scully. It’s the start of a deeper, more human connection to Scully than he had been able to form previously;

and possibly could have allowed a more nuanced relationship with his own mother as well-- an upgrade to their usual parentification-alienation dynamic they’d cultivated. But none of that happens.

Another important note: Scully again refers to Tena in The Unnatural, asking if his mother had ever told him to go outside and play. The only two mentions across S5 and S6 have come from Scully to Mulder, proving she is that grounding, "normal" influence between tractor beams and familial, everyday life.

Then Mulder’s brain explodes and his physical abilities implode and all around him goes nuts during Biogenesis and The Sixth Extinction.

The Sixth Extinction-Amor Fati

The episode begins on Mulder’s blissfully peaceful face-- one we hardly ever see-- as he sits on a beach observing a family and their little son. As the boy grows up, Mulder passively follows his adventures, eventually shifting to active participation after extracting himself from his brain's induced, dreamlike state.

(Side note: There’s some speculation about the boy-- "Is he William because the writers were already planning for Requiem’s plot twist?", etc. I believe he’s a manifestation of Mulder’s inner, childish drive for the Truth. He yells at Mulder “You were supposed to help me!” while destroying the UFO sandcastle, a predecessor to dream-Scully yelling at him to “Get up and fight” while the aliens were invading at his doorstep. It’s that inner part of himself that gets lost in the wash of apathy he’s prone to; and which Scully always ignites and pulls him out of-- Little Green Men, Anasazi, One Son, etc.)

In the present, Mulder’s doctor gives his prognosis to Tena Mulder. This is the first we’ve seen of her since Demons; and she doesn’t seem pleased to be put in this position.

She loves her son, she does-- but she’s avoided his sick beds and injuries since his confrontation, blinding herself to the truth: he hadn’t come to cudgel her with the past (like CSM did in Talitha Cumi), and it was deeply unfair and cruel of her to smear him with that greasy label and cast him from her life. She had treated Mulder like her ex-husband: using Bill Mulder as the strawman for all of the past’s wrongs, including her own.

“Enough!” she yells at the doctor.

“There’s only so much bluntness a mother can take.”

Tena looks down and away, a bitter undercurrent to her grief. And while this applies to this specific moment, it also harkens back to the fracturing conversation in Demons and other breaking shouting matches in the past.

Again, Tena demonstrates her main reaction to unavoidable stress is anger, like her son (see here for Demons and here for Talitha Cumi.) She does not wilt: she commands and screams.

She’s already all in black, mourning her son while desperately hoping he’ll pull through. It’s part of their dichotomous relationship:

Mulder was dead to her for over a year now, hypothetically mourned and buried; but now he’s very much alive and truly dying.

She cuts off the doctor’s conciliatory remarks: “All you do is sedate him.”

Turning to her son, she mourns, “You’re turning him… into a zombie.”

The former Mrs. Mulder reaches out to touch her son's face--

but she halts her movements,

either out of guilt for trying to connect now or out of some misguided sense of self-denial. She turns her gesture into a utility, moving his face toward her to look for a sign of recognition--

and, though his eyes drift towards her--

they've listlessly moved, meaning nothing.

“I know you can hear me, Fox,” she insists.

“Can you give me a sign?”

This is incredibly telling: Tena firmly believes their relationship is so strong that Mulder would be able to pull himself from the brink to satisfy any of her pleas. And he would have if he'd been able to-- always will for those he loves (Scully says this directly to Diana’s face later this episode when confronting her in the hallway.)

It’s here that Tena realizes her son is truly beyond all help, medical and personal. There is only one option left: one she hoped to avoid.

Mulder responds internally-- “I can hear you, Mom”-- without realizing his words are trapped in his mind.

Tena has given up hope; and turns to leave-- “Fox…. I love you, my darling boy”-- resigning herself to her next task: calling in smokey reinforcements of the hated ex-lover kind.

Mulder can hear and it makes him desperate for her not to leave. This is the first time in years he has heard her say she loves him; and he can’t hug her or even keep her by his side. It breaks him, and his internal begging escalates to screaming.

It’s here when Mulder’s daydreams mesh with reality as CSM begins invading his thoughts (Note: His response to CSM is intriguing: “I could always hear you. Even when my mind is jammed with a thousand voices, I can hear you like a snake hissing underneath.”) But his mother’s involvement is not quite over.

After Mulder’s disappearance, security camera footage is combed through, showing Tena directly involved in signing out her son to CSM (while his men spraypainted the cameras to avoid detection--

only, they’re really bad at it, ineffectively spraying all of the cameras and catching Tena and their boss’s arm in the process.)

Thus ends Tena's involvement in this episode.

Biological Father?

An important aside is the biological father question; and it’s necessary to pause here to reflect more deeply on this issue.

It’s Amor Fati that takes another firm stance on the paternity issue, stating clearly and concisely that Carl Spender is Fox Mulder’s father, with CSM himself as well as side characters acknowledging this as irrefutable fact (Diana Fowley included.) This becomes canon from now on; however, in previous episodes the issue of paternity was only ever mildly called into question and placed firmly on Samantha’s shoulders: she was the lovechild of Tena and CSM, which is why he spirited her away after her abduction, never returned her, and kept her picture with him wherever he went (established in Redux II; and reaffirmed the rest of S5 and S6. Another post for another day.) In fact, it was firmly established that Fox Mulder was not CSM’s son; and was set up as the foil for Jeffrey Spender so that he could become greater than his rival (Mulder having disappointed and frustrated CSM and the powers that be by not embracing their ideology ultimately) in S5 and S6.

Can these two perspectives-- both held by the same character that had previously had the same conviction for the opposite viewpoint but changed it suddenly and (seemingly) randomly without any new information on the topic, unlike any other issue he dealt with previously in canon that had involved him directly or indirectly-- be reconciled? Or is it the writers’ fault?

Well, of course it’s the writers’ fault. But let’s examine the two theories:

#1. Bill Mulder is Fox Mulder’s biological father.

This holds up because it was implied he didn’t meet Carl Spender until they bunked together at the army base around a year after Fox Mulder was born. They were friendly enough for Bill to brag about his son’s first word-- “J.F.K.”-- but not enough for Carl to have known about the finer details of Bill’s family’s life (names, ages, etc.) Bill and Tena were married ten months before Mulder was born, meaning he was either a honeymoon baby or a very late out-of-wedlock baby. Regardless, that leaves no wiggle room for a paternity question. EXCEPT Travelers is set in the 50s, previous to the Mulders’ marriage in the early 60s, and Bill is sporting a wedding ring and recruited out of the army. Because of that hiccup in the timeline, it lends more credence to the show bible's interpretation (meaning: there was no show bible-- Chris Carter and his show runners were proud of that fact); or Bill, like his son, just likes to wear wedding rings without being married.

#2. CSM is Fox Mulder’s biological father.

Samantha is already established to have been his daughter (with strong confirmation in Demons alone; but continual proof since Redux II), so it wouldn’t change his abduction reason. But if this were true, why did he leave Mulder to be raised by a broken home where he would get less access to his son-- especially after the divorce-- and thus have less control? It was only by luck that Mulder decided to join the FBI when he was recruited out of school, whereas Jeffrey Spender had been (essentially) pushed and nudged since childhood into the FBI. If Mulder had decided against recruiting, all of CSM’s-- supposedly-- long-term plans for his son would have been for naught. And since he places so much time and energy cultivating Mulder’s interests and-- supposedly-- checkmating his moves left and right to engineer him down to the office and into the very hands of the Conspirators so that one day he might join (another post for another day), all he had to do was raise him, show him the bounties in store for him with the Syndicate, and groom him into being an intellectual mastermind on par with the best thinkers the Consortium has to offer.

On top of all that, he’d have to have known Tena without Bill knowing he knew Tena; and Tena would have had to manipulate Bill into marriage to cover up her mistake. Which would mean she is projecting a lot of anger onto Bill that belongs squarely on her own shoulders: her own children’s futures being related to this man and his dark secrets, involving herself in this mess through this man BEFORE her husband had even been recruited by this shadow group; tying herself forever to the darkness of the Conspiracy before her children were even born and she was even married. In which case: BILL was the unwitting victim, being recruited by CSM and co. to keep Tena close to her lover; and he was involved in something WAY over his head before he could even comprehend it. That could easily align with his perspective in Piper Maru and Travelers; BUT it wouldn’t align with his own self-loathing and distance, as he placed full responsibility on himself and tried to shield Tena from his work as much as possible. And it would place a more treacherous angle on Tena: woman who seduced the wrong man, covered up her mistake through marriage, kept going back to her mistake, volunteered her husband to his cause to keep Spender close and in her life, and eventually threw all blame onto Bill’s unwitting lap when CSM came to collect his dues.

While this is a great and more sinister reading, it doesn’t match up with her actions in the series:

her hatred of Spender at her 4th of July party in Two Fathers’ flashback; her hatred of him in Mulder’s Demons flashback; her hatred and fear of CSM in Talitha Cumi; and, more importantly, CSM’s reactions to her throughout the entire series. He's lovesick, but also vindictive: if Tena’s wrath weren't righteous and justified, Carl Spender would have rubbed her faults in her face and threatened to expose her to her son to keep her in line. He did none of these things; and respected her and her actions enough never to threaten or harm her.

So, ultimately: no, I don’t believe there is the wherewithal to manufacture a scenario where Tena and CSM were lover-like embracing throughout the years (too much intent and cunning involved, as well as fierce loathing from her side even before her children were abducted and the Mulder family fell apart.) No, there is no canonical weight for CSM to assume Fox Mulder is his son pre-The Sixth Extinction (as stated and shown multiple times.) No, there is no evidence to overturn his conviction that Jeffrey was his only son. No, there is not a shred of evidence to prove he and Tena Mulder had even MET prior to the Mulders’ marriage (not even in the mess up timeline of Travelers’.) So no, I do not believe he is Fox Mulder’s biological father.

OR-- and this requires stretching of the brain so vast that Mulder would have collapsed in a matter of seconds instead of days-- Tena met CSM once randomly before she married; neither thought anything of it; she becomes pregnant, assumes or passes off the baby as Bill's; and Spender doesn't remember the incident at all until he sees her picture in the barracks (CSM's flashback episode), carrying his suspicions with him from that point onward. Then Tena and he met again later, had another brief affair; and he said something she disliked and hated him ever since, keeping him away from her kids and angrily telling Bill off every time he let his friend into the family home. It would explain the long look at Tena's photo in the barracks. ...But, again, this is WILD conjecture that is a headcanon that really shouldn't be except the writers doubled down on the CSM paternity question. (AH, WELL.)

I liken this debate to a loose quote that I heard sometime while watching the show (do not quote me on this): If you repeat it often enough, a lie becomes the Truth. All evidence points to CSM not being Fox Mulder’s biological father; but everyone-- the show’s writers included-- repeat that he is; and now it’s become a truth of its own. You decide which side has more merit~.

In Summary

Tena Mulder is back, having no one else there to make medical decisions for her son. Seeing him so vulnerable breaks down that resistant wall she’d built up since Demons. Tena sees Mulder has no hope without the enemy's help; so she signs him over to CSM.

Also: there is more evidence against CSM being Mulder’s biological dad than for it. It all comes down which side of the discussion you deem more meritable.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

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