Twenty-six years ago today, The X-Files aired one of its most unsettling and spiritually charged episodes. Titled Orison, the episode arrived quietly in the middle of Season Seven and left behind something far louder: a lingering sense of dread, moral ambiguity, and existential unease that still divides viewers decades later.
“Orison” is not just another serial-killer story. It is an episode about belief, manipulation, free will, and the terrifying possibility that evil does not always require supernatural explanations to feel otherworldly. By revisiting one of the series’ most disturbing villains and placing him in direct conversation with faith itself, the episode ventures into darker psychological territory than many X-Files installments dared to tread.
The Return of Donnie Pfaster
The episode opens in Marion Federal Penitentiary, Illinois, where a prison chapel service is being led by the charismatic Reverend Orison. Among the inmates sits Donnie Pfaster, the infamous “death fetishist” previously imprisoned for murder and for kidnapping Dana Scully. From the start, the episode frames Pfaster not as a man seeking redemption, but as something coiled and waiting.
Pfaster’s presence immediately sets the tone. Viewers familiar with his earlier appearance know that he represents one of the rare X-Files villains who feels disturbingly real—devoid of alien mythology, government conspiracies, or science-fiction buffers. He is human, and that is precisely what makes him horrifying.
When a violent incident in the prison garment shop coincides with Pfaster’s escape—time seeming to slow, guards rendered strangely passive—the series introduces its central mystery. This is not a brute-force breakout. Something subtler, something psychological, is at work.
Scully’s Awakening and the Language of Signs
Back in Washington, Dana Scully awakens to violent winds and a power outage. Her alarm clock flickers to 6:66, a visual cue that feels almost deliberately provocative. Whether coincidence or omen, the episode leans heavily into symbolism, inviting the viewer to experience events through Scully’s increasingly unsettled perspective.
When Mulder and Scully are assigned to recapture Pfaster, Mulder offers Scully an out. Given Pfaster’s history with her, walking away would be understandable. Scully refuses.
This choice is critical. “Orison” is not about Mulder chasing truth. It is about Scully confronting meaning.
As the investigation unfolds, they interview a mutilated inmate who repeats the phrase “Glory, amen” while performing identical physical gestures. Mulder theorizes that Pfaster’s escape may have been enabled by group hypnosis, an idea Scully initially resists. Yet the clues point elsewhere—not to Pfaster as the architect, but to Reverend Orison himself.
Reverend Orison: Faith as a Weapon
Reverend Orison is one of the episode’s most intriguing and divisive elements. He is not overtly monstrous. He is personable, articulate, and deeply convinced of his spiritual mission. According to Mulder, Orison has aided other prisoners in escaping, framing their actions as divine will rather than criminal acts.
What makes Orison unsettling is not what he believes, but how he believes. His faith is absolute, untempered by doubt or humility. In his worldview, redemption is not earned—it is enforced.
A chilling diner sequence crystallizes this dynamic. Orison confronts Pfaster for returning to his old habits after offering a prostitute a “buff and polish.” The moment is eerie not because of violence, but because of restraint. When U.S. Marshals arrive, Orison distracts them through hypnotic suggestion, allowing Pfaster to escape once again. The irony is devastating: a man preaching salvation actively enables a predator.
Pfaster’s betrayal of Orison—running him over with his own car—feels almost inevitable. Evil, after all, does not reward belief.
Scully’s Faith Comes to the Surface
As the case deepens, the episode becomes increasingly intimate. Scully begins hearing “Don’t Look Any Further” by Dennis Edwards, a song that carries personal significance. In one of the episode’s most powerful scenes, she confides in Mulder about her childhood.
When she was thirteen, she heard that same song on the radio the day her Sunday school teacher was murdered. It was the moment she realized evil existed—not abstractly, but personally. Now, decades later, the song returns as Pfaster escapes at 6:06, the same time Scully’s power outage occurred.
To Scully, these are not coincidences. She believes God may be speaking to her—not to comfort, but to warn.
Mulder listens, respectfully but skeptically. He counters with science: a medical examination reveals that Orison drilled a hole into his own skull, increasing cerebral blood flow and enabling advanced hypnotic control. What appears divine is neurological. What feels spiritual is biological.
The tension between faith and explanation reaches its peak here. The episode refuses to resolve it cleanly.
Monsters Without Masks
Pfaster’s later actions strip away any remaining ambiguity. At Orison’s apartment, he hires an escort. When he discovers she is not a natural redhead—a fixation tied to his pathology—he becomes violent. Only her resistance saves her life.
When Orison confronts Pfaster at gunpoint and takes him to the woods, the episode teases poetic justice. A grave is dug. Judgment seems imminent. But the moment collapses when Pfaster transforms into a demonic visage and kills Orison.
Whether this transformation is literal or symbolic remains deliberately unclear. The X-Files has always thrived in that uncertainty. Is Pfaster truly something more than human, or is this the manifestation of Scully’s fear and belief?
Mulder and Scully arrive too late. The case is declared over. Mulder urges Scully to “look no further.”
She cannot.
A Personal Reckoning
The episode’s final act brings the horror home. Pfaster stalks Scully, not as an abstract threat, but as a personal reckoning. The confrontation is intimate, terrifying, and stripped of mythology. There is no grand conspiracy, no monster of the week—only a woman facing the embodiment of evil she has carried since childhood.
In the end, Pfaster is killed. Justice is served. But peace is not.
Scully’s faith remains unresolved. Mulder’s explanations remain insufficient. The episode closes not with answers, but with exhaustion.
Reception and Legacy
Upon airing, “Orison” received a mixture of praise and criticism. Reviewers lauded its oppressive atmosphere, moral complexity, and emotional depth. Many compared its tone to Millennium, noting its bleak worldview and psychological intensity.
Criticism focused largely on Reverend Orison as a character, with some arguing he was underdeveloped or too conceptually ambitious for a single episode. Even so, the episode has endured as a standout—particularly for viewers drawn to The X-Files at its darkest and most introspective.
Unlike episodes driven by aliens or conspiracies, “Orison” lingers because it offers no comfortable distance. Its horror is human. Its questions are spiritual. Its wounds are personal.
Why “Orison” Still Matters
Twenty-six years later, “Orison” remains unsettling because it refuses easy conclusions. It challenges the viewer to sit with discomfort—to accept that faith can inspire hope or justify harm, that evil can wear ordinary faces, and that some questions are not meant to be solved.
In the vast mythology of The X-Files, “Orison” stands apart as a meditation on belief itself. Not belief in aliens or monsters, but belief in meaning—what we trust, what we fear, and what we choose to see.
It is not an episode that invites rewatching for comfort.
It is one that demands reflection.
And like its haunting refrain suggests, sometimes the most frightening instruction of all is this:
Don’t look any further.