episode by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: No date given. When Mulder gives Scully a birthday card she sys it's two months early. As her birthday is February 23rd, this would place this story around Christmas time or so. However, "Beyond the Sea" took place just after Christmas, leaving Mulder in no condition to pursue cases for a while, and "Lazarus" is two episodes after that. Make of that what you will.
Maryland Marine Bank. Scully and an older man, Jack Willis, wait for an anticipated bank raid, for which he's received a tip-off. Outside, a man and woman prepare to rob the bank. She's nervous, but he promises they'll be together always and that their luck won't run out. He goes in alone, but if confronted by Willis and Scully. Willis is shot, but Scully manages to shoot the robber, Warren Dupre.
Both men are rushed to the hospital. Willis has flat-lined for 13 minutes, but Scully insists tat they don't give up on him. At her order, they give bigger and bigger shocks to restart his heart. No-one notices that Dupre's body is jerking in time with the shocks. Willis's heart restarts, as the camera focuses on Dupre's dead arm, with dragon tattoo.
Bethesda Naval Hospital, two days later. Willis gets out of bed and steals some clothes. He flashes the scene of Willis's death, and looks wonderingly into the mirror. Then he goes to see Dupre's body and chops his fingers off, removing his ring.
Scully tells Mulder that Willis lived this case for three years, and that this could be some sort of post-trauma psychosis. He asks about Dupre, and she tells him he used to be a prison guard until he fell in love with Lula Philips, an inmate and later his partner in crime. Since then they have carried out a spate of violent robberies, killing seven people. Mulder suggests the fingers were removed to get at the wedding ring.
Willis goes to Dupre's home, acting and speaking as if he really is Dupre. The dragon tattoo starts to from on his own arm.
Mulder gets intrigued by the fact that the fingers were removed from the corpse by a left-handed man. While Willis was right-handed, Dupre was left-handed. The record of his heart beat while after being revived shows signs of two heartbeats. Scully thinks it's simply instrument malfunction, but Mulder tells her that "two men died in that crash room. One man came back. The question is - which one?"
Mulder and Scully visit a doctor, Dr Varnes, who is clearly someone Mulder is familiar with. He talks about near-death experiences. Scully, "as a scientist" thinks they are some sort of hallucination, but the doctor tells her that most people who've experienced near-death experiences can never wear watches again, as they have been stopped by the increased electrical activity in their bodies. People who return from the dead are "profoundly changed," he says, citing such things as psychic ability, personality change, increased zest for life. Negative consequences are rare, he says, but there is a brief time when a person is vulnerable to be taken over by another consciousness.
Scully tells Mulder she doesn't discount the near-death experience, as it can be explained psychologically, but in Willis's case she thinks everything derives from stress of the case and his own personality. Mulder asks her how well she knows him. "We dated for almost a year," she says, saying he was her instructor at the Academy and that they shared the same birthday. "The plot thickens," Mulder says. She says Willis was always intense and determined, incapable of relaxing. She can accept he had a near-death experience, but certainly not that Dupre has taken over his body.
Willis, still acting like Dupre, holds Lula's brother at gunpoint, asking where she is. "I miss her, Tommy," he says, "that's why I came back." He accuses Tommy of setting them up and telling the FBI, then he shoots him.
At the crime scene, Mulder works out the dead man was watching television when he was killed. As the television is now off, he thinks the killer's prints should be found there. Willis then bursts in. Scully goes to him, but he flashes to seeing her shooting at him. She leads him outside and asks him what happened, but he says he can't remember. Talking like Willis again, he insists that he's not sent back to the hospital. "We're half way there," he says, saying he thinks it was Lula who killed her brother. He's determined to be there at the end of the case, he tells her. Scully reluctantly agrees, but asks him, "as a colleague and a friend," to take a medical.
At the firing range, Willis practises shooting, telling Mulder he needs to recertify after having been shot. Mulder asks him to sign Scully's birthday card, and he does, using his left hand.
Mulder gives Scully the birthday card. "You're two months early," she says, thus further confusing the time line. He tells her what happened, and also that the print taken from Tommy Philips's television has been stolen from the evidence room. She's none to pleased at the fact that he suspects Willis. "This isn't an X-File," she tells him, firmly, saying that Willis has passed all his evaluations. Mulder points out that Willis's signature has changed as well, but Scully dismisses it all as just symptoms of stress. "This doesn't prove a thing," she says.
Willis gets a call about a possible sighting of Lula Philips and is about to rush out after it. Scully meets him in the corridor and asks him about the missing print. "Are you implying something, Agent Scully?" he asks, sternly, denying all knowledge of the print. He tells her he's about to close his biggest case, and asks her if she's coming.
Scully and Willis follow up the tip. "Where's our back-up," Scully says. "You said you called them." Scully apprehends Lula, but is then herself grabbed by Willis who makes her put his handcuffs on her wrists. "Come one, baby?" Willis says to Lula, who doesn't seem to recognise him.
Later, Scully is tied to radiator as Willis tries desperately to convince Lula that he really is Dupre. She tests him on various facts about their lives, all of which he gets right. "This is too weird," she says "I can't believe it's you."
Mulder and another agent argue about what has happened. The other agent thinks Scully and Willis are missing together, but Mulder, wearily, insists it wasn't Willis. "This isn't one of your X-File theories, is it?" the agent says. "It doesn't matter what I think," Mulder says. "We're still after the same thing." Willis/Dupre then calls Mulder, who demands to talk to Scully. "Dana? Are you okay? Dana?" he shouts, but she is only allowed a word or two before Willis/Dupre stops the call.
Scully tells Willis/Dupre that it won't work. She calls him Jack, but he insists that isn't his name. She tells him that it is. His birthday is February 23rd 1957, she tells him, and they spent a weekend in his parent's cabin up at Pine Barren. They drove up in a snow storm and he taught her to fish through the ice. "Come on, Jack," she urges him, as he flashes back to the snowy road. Then he's Dupre again, and accuses her of killing him and leaving him on the table to die while she tended to her friend. Willis is dead, he tells her, and he saw him die, slipping down a dark tunnel. She still insists he's Willis and he gets angry, pointing a gun at her throat. "You won't kill me," she says, and Lula agrees with her, coming in to reminding him that she's their "ticket."
Willis has been drinking lots of soda, and Scully warns him that he's diabetic and needs insulin.
Back at the FBI HQ, Mulder listens to Willis's notes on the case, in which he says he's almost envious on the close relationship of Dupre and Lula. The phone rings, bringing news tat a drug store has been robbed and insulin stolen. Mulder briefs some agents, telling them Scully is likely to be within a five mile area of this drugstore. "Am I missing something?" an agent says, disparagingly, pointing out that this means searching thousands of households.
Lula pulls a gun on Willis/Dupre, refusing to let him take the medicine. She was the one who set Dupre up, she said.
Lula calls the FBI. "You lay one hand on Scully and so help me God...." Mulder begins, but Lula interrupts him, telling him she needs a million dollars before Scully will be returned. They manage to trace the number, but it turns out to be Scully's cell phone number.
Mulder listens again and again to the recording of the phone call, looking for clues. He gets the recording fiddled around with by some nice high-tech stuff, and hears the sound of a small plane taking off. The techie can even work out how high it is.
"Mulder's says he's got something," the assembled agents are told. "What?" one of them asks. "An alien virus? Or new information on the Kennedy assassination." "Mulder's all right," the leading agent says. "Pay attention and you might learn something from the man." Mulder tells them about the plane, which has narrowed the target area down to three square miles, to be visited by a hundred law enforcement officers. "For those of you who don't know already," he says, "this one's important to me so let's do it right."
Willis, very weak now, asks Scully about their weekend in the snow, beginning to remember things about it. As he gets weaker, he flashes to various things about the robbery.
An evangelist comes to the door, but Lula shuts the door in his face. He turns out to be a police officer undercover, and reports that the target has been sighted.
Willis seems dead, and Lula comes close to gloat, but he pulls her gun out. "I loved you," he tells her, saying she was the only reason he came back.
Outside, the FBI SWAT team are going in for the kill.
Lula tries to convince Willis/Dupre that she always loved him, but he's not taken in and kills her, just as the FBI burst in. "You okay?" Mulder asks Scully, but she just cries "Jack!" Willis is dead, the tattoo fading off his arm.
Later, Mulder gives Scully Willis' watch, inscribed "Happy 35th, love D". She says he gave it to him three years ago, and wonders what she'll tell Willis' family. "The official story?" Mulder says, which is that Willis died in the line of duty while apprehending Lula Philips. "What am I supposed to tell myself?" she asks, finding out that Willis's watch stopped at the same time as Willis went into cardiac arrest in the hospital. "What does it mean?" she asks. "It means.... It means whatever you want it to mean," Mulder says.