"Milagro" is the eighteenth episode of the sixth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It originally aired on the Fox network on April 18, 1999. The episode's teleplay was written by Chris Carter from a story by John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Kim Manners. The episode is a "Monster of the Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Milagro" earned a Nielsen household rating of 9, being watched by 15.2 million people upon its initial broadcast. The episode received mixed to positive reviews from television critics.
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal, while the skeptical Scully has been assigned to debunk his work. In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate a series of murders in which the heart has been removed from the victims. A writer who lives next door to Mulder is writing a novel about the murders before they actually happen and soon, Scully finds herself confused and drawn to the writer, who has a romantic interest in her.
"Milagro" was inspired by the idea of someone thinking of something so much that it becomes a reality, a topic Shiban later noted was "familiar" to anyone who had written a script. The part of Phillip Padgett had been written specifically for the actor John Hawkes. In addition, the production for "Milagro" was decidedly low-budget due to its "intimate and personality-driven" nature. The episode's title means "miracle" in Spanish. The episode has been analyzed for its use of symbolism, its exploration of motive, and the role reversal of Mulder and Scully.
Plot Phillip Padgett (John Hawkes), a fledgling author, sits at a desk, suffering from writer's block. He eventually retires to the bathroom to discard a spent cigarette. Without warning or concern, the man suddenly reaches into his chest and removes a bloody heart. Later, he walks down metal stairs into a cluttered basement, and opens the door of an incinerator. Noticing a beating heart amidst the flames, and unfazed by the vision, he nonchalantly tosses in a paper bag.
Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) later encounters the stranger as she walks into an elevator. Both ride in silence up to the fourth floor, with Scully somewhat unsettled by the experience. At Fox Mulder's (David Duchovny) apartment, Mulder and Scully begin discussing a case the pair are working on, wherein the heart of the victim had been removed with the absence of any significant physical evidence. Mulder believes the heart was removed with a technique known as psychic surgery. Meanwhile, Padgett, who is Mulder's neighbor, stands on a chair with his ear to an air vent, listening to the conversation.
Later that night, two teenagers get into a fight in the woods. The girl, named Maggie (Jillian Bach), runs into the woods to be alone and Kevin (Angelo Vacco), her boyfriend, gives chase. However, he is attacked and his heart is removed. Meanwhile, the writer intensely transcribes the event on his typewriter. The next day, Mulder and Scully discuss this latest incident via phone. An unmarked envelope is discovered by Scully in the office containing a milagro, a type of pendant. While she examines the pendant, a voice-over from the writer describes Scully's most intimate feelings as she examines the unsolicited gift.
Scully later runs into the author at a church. He admits sending Scully the pendant and discusses with her the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She leaves, visibly shaken. Scully meets Mulder and relays her most recent encounter with the writer to Mulder. Later, Padgett woos Scully into his apartment with more character revelations. Mulder bursts in and arrests him based on accurate descriptions of the case murders in his novel, which he secretly read after discovering it in the mail. While Padgett is in custody, Maggie is murdered in the same fashion as Kevin. This establishes a de facto alibi for the author. Lacking concrete and connective evidence to the murders, and hoping Padgett might lead them to his partner in crime, Mulder releases Padgett from custody.
Back at his apartment, Padgett converses with the killer from his book, a deceased Brazilian surgeon named Ken Naciamento (Nestor Serrano). It is revealed that through some sort of psychic connection, Padgett's Naciamento has come back to life and has been removing hearts from victims. The two discuss motivations for the killings. Realizing that his novel prognosticates Scully's murder, Padgett heads to the incinerator to destroy his novel. Mulder intercepts him, thinking Padgett is instead simply destroying incriminatory evidence. Meanwhile, Naciamento accosts Scully. After hearing gunshots, Mulder runs toward his apartment and finds Scully on the ground, covered in blood but alive. The episode closes with a voice-over from the author, explaining his final actions. Padgett lies on the basement floor in front of the incinerator, his beating heart in hand, having "... given what he could not receive".
Production
Writing and casting
The idea behind the episode occurred when John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz were discussing how stressful being an X-Files writer could be. The episode's theme of someone thinking of something so much that it becomes real was "familiar" to anyone who had written a script, Shiban later explained. Shiban and Spotnitz created a rough draft for the episode and then sent it to series creator Chris Carter, who was busy shooting the pilot for the new television series Harsh Realm. Carter re-wrote portions of the script, including the ending, to show that the writer, although confused, does indeed "have love in his heart".Meisler (2000), p. 235.
Spotnitz later called the episode "personal". He noted that the cards that hang on Padgett's wall were put up to emulate the original writing style of The X-Files, saying, "The cards that are on the writer’s wall are the same format that we wrote The X-Files in. We would use those same cards when figuring out stories for the series." Spotnitz wrote the notes himself "because the prop guy couldn’t do it as well as we could because that’s really the way we did it. It’s a very emotional love story and it’s really about our love for these characters as writers". The writers eventually settled on the title of "Milagro," which means miracle in Spanish.
Several weeks before production of "Milagro" began, John Hawkes had auditioned for the part of Pinker Rawls in the episode "Trevor". Both Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz felt that Hawkes was not right for the part; however, they believed he possessed a "dignity and simplicity", and so they wrote the part of Philip Padgett specifically for him, as they believed his acting would prevent the main character in "Milagro" from becoming a one-dimensional, stock villain.Meisler (2000), p. 236.
Filming and effects The production for "Milagro" was decidedly low-budget due to its "intimate and personality-driven" nature. Director Kim Manners sought to film most of the episode "very simply", because he wanted "the characters to carry it".Manners, 12:46. Manners wanted to frame the opening scene in a way that told "the story […] in a series of images", and so, he utilized quick cuts between shots.Manners, 0:32–0:40. Many of the scenes, such as the opening pan, were created by means of a crane shot.Manners, 0:14.Manners, 27:56.
The sequence in which Mulder runs was shot on a motorcycle; the production staff decided to use motorcycles because Duchovny had been able to outrun two horses in the fourth-season episode "Tunguska".Manners, 35:20–35:32. Several locations that were scouted for the episode proved difficult to use. Two churches that had been selected for the episode rescinded filming permission just before production commenced, requiring the location scouts to find replacements as quickly as they could. The scenes in the woods were filmed at Griffith Park in Los Angeles because of its many pine trees.Manners, 6:33–6:44. Due to the fact that the actual park is rather sparsely populated by brush, the foliage was all created by the crew of the series.Manners, 7:51–7:57. Manners shot several of the forest scenes with a 200 millimeter lens to obscure the lights of Los Angeles in the distance.Manners, 7:26–7:33. Padgett's furnace was filmed on a set called the "red/blue room". It had originally been created for the sixth-season opener "The Beginning".Manners, 2:35–2:43. The jail set was constructed in a large warehouse by a different production company.Manners, 31:15–31:35. The X-Files rented the space for several days for filming, for five thousand dollars.Manners, 36:10–36:27 Finding a graveyard with "old-fashioned vertical tombstones" proved a challenge for locations manager Ilt Jones. Eventually one was found in Altadena, California. The fog in the cemetery was created by burying small "misters" that produced water vapor. Because the vapor was cold, it hugged the ground, emulating the properties of actual fog.Manners, 33:30–33:40
The sequence in which Padgett rips his heart out was created with a rubber heart. The blood that leaks from Padgett's chest was added to "hide the fact that [the crew was] doing a little sleight of hand".Manners, 2:02–2:17. The image of the beating heart in the furnace was created by overlapping a shot of a fake beating heart and a shot of actual fire. The two were then merged in post-production by animator John Wash, because the fire would have melted the actual heart model.Manners, 2:50–3:11. The hearts of Naciamento's victims were created via a pump that was operated off-screen.Manners, 8:07–8:12. The actual milagro prop was crafted several times because, according to Manners, the face was particularly difficult to get right.Manners, 11:25–11:34. In fact, the second time the medallion appears in the episode, it is a different prop.Manners, 20:30–20:35.
Music and cultural references For his score, Mark Snow incorporated human heartbeats so as to complement the themes of the episode. During the graveyard scene, one of the tombstones is marked "Salinger," with the names "Nicholas" and "Diana" visible underneath, a reference to the parents of Charlie, Bailey, Julia, Claudia, and Owen in the Fox television series Party of Five. The date on the tombstone reads 1994, the date the series premiered. P.K. Simonds, writer and executive producer for the show was initially unaware that the tombstone made an appearance. Others, including Spotnitz, had believed the tombstone to be a joking reference to famous author J.D. Salinger.Meisler (2000), p. 237.
Themes
Margaret Kaner, in the book The X-Files and Literature, notes that, instead of merely utilizing symbolism, "Milagro" makes "symbolism as a subject". Kaner points out that the Christian symbol of the burning human heart is infused into the episode in a variety of different ways—hearts are both removed from human victims, as well as burned in furnaces. The episode's plot and the Christian symbol are connected when Padgett leaves Scully the milagro charm.