The most elaborate attempt to give one of these characters an outside love interest came in “Fire,” but it (aargh) fell flat. British cop Phoebe Green appears as one of Mulder’s old flames who returns to help solve the case, and the script contains a lot of material detailing their former relationship. That relationship was supposed to provide the emotional flow for the entire episode, but there was such a clear lack of chemistry between these characters that Green was edited out of the episode as much as possible.
The show then tried to give Mulder and Scully another romance – they met Mulder’s old flame (possibly his ex-wife!) in season five, and Scully dated a bad boy who convinced her to get a bad tramp stamp tattoo in season four – but by this point, most fans would rather see their favorite characters explore each other’s bodies than the latest UFO rumors, so the show was simply putting off the inevitable.
