Most critics come down in favour, and the praise gathers around the pilot and the early standalone episodes. The pairing of Mulder and Scully is named again and again as the foundation: two leads with an easy rapport, working unexplained cases that end with a twist and room for doubt. Several reviews credit the monster-of-the-week stories with setting a standard for television horror, and the 1993 notices find the script ingenious and the direction cool.
The spread is wide. Reservations cluster on the running conspiracy plot, which Empire finds overblown in the revived season while welcoming the return of self-contained cases. The Hollywood Reporter calls the premise laboured and the drama not involving. Two later pieces go further: Vulture argues the show glamorised anti-government paranoia in ways that now look dated, and The Telegraph holds that it turned hackneyed and outlived its novelty. The harshest verdicts come from critics looking back, not from those who saw the pilot fresh.