He was the guy you loved to hate. Or maybe you just loved him. When Alex Krycek first walked into Fox Mulder’s life in the 1994 episode "Sleepless," he looked like a Ken doll in a cheap suit. A wide-eyed FBI rookie. A placeholder for a missing Dana Scully.
Nobody expected him to stick around for eight seasons.
Honestly, the show didn't even plan for it. Howard Gordon originally wrote Krycek as a three-episode arc to fill the Scully-sized hole left by Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy. But Nicholas Lea brought something... greasy. Something magnetic. Before long, he wasn't just a partner; he was the "Ratboy." That’s the nickname the fandom gave him, and it fit perfectly. He was a survivor who could scuttle through the walls of any conspiracy and come out relatively clean.
The Double Agent Who Actually Had No Side
Most people think Krycek was just a henchman for the Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM). That’s a massive oversimplification. Sure, he started there. He did the dirty work: he helped abduct Scully, he murdered Mulder’s father, Bill Mulder, in cold blood, and he accidentally caused the death of Scully’s sister, Melissa.
But Krycek wasn't a loyal soldier. He was a free agent with a very chips-on-the-table survival instinct.
After the CSM tried to blow him up in a car bomb (the "Paper Clip" incident), Krycek went rogue. He wasn't working for the Syndicate anymore. He wasn't working for the FBI. He was working for Alex Krycek. This is where the character gets fascinating. He becomes a bridge between the American Syndicate and the Russian side of the conspiracy.
You’ve got to remember the Tunguska arc. It’s peak X-Files.
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Krycek drags Mulder to a Russian gulag under the guise of helping him, only to reveal he’s fluent in Russian and totally in bed with the local authorities. Then, in a moment of brutal poetic justice, a group of Russian prisoners—men who had been experimented on with the Black Oil—amputate Krycek's left arm to prevent him from being used as a test subject.
He spent the rest of the series with a prosthetic limb and a massive chip on his shoulder. He became a man without a country, a man without an arm, and a man who seemingly existed only to make Walter Skinner's life a living hell.
The "Ratboy" and the Black Oil Connection
If there is one thing that defines Krycek’s journey more than the betrayal, it’s the goo. The Black Oil (Purity).
In "Piper Maru" and "Apocrypha," Krycek becomes a literal vessel for the alien entity. Watching Nicholas Lea play an oil-possessed puppet was some of the best physical acting in the series. He leaks the oil into a UFO in a North Dakota silo and gets left for dead.
Most characters would die there. Not Krycek. He manages to negotiate his way out of a silo, out of a gulag, and eventually into a position where he is blackmailing Assistant Director Skinner with nanotechnology.
He basically became the show’s wild card. You never knew if he was going to hand Mulder a gun or point one at his head. Sometimes he did both in the same scene.
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Why the Mulder-Krycek Dynamic Still Feels Weirdly Intense
If you spend any time on X-Files forums today, you’ll see people talking about the "homoerotic tension" between Mulder and Krycek. It sounds like fan-fiction, but it’s actually baked into the performances.
There is a famous scene in "The Red and the Black" where Krycek basically assaults Mulder with a kiss (it was more of a weird, threatening plant of information, but still). Nicholas Lea and David Duchovny played their rivalry with a strange, sweaty intimacy.
Mulder hated Krycek for killing his father. Krycek envied Mulder for his purpose.
Krycek was a man who grew up as the son of Cold War immigrants, trying to fill big shoes and please powerful men like the CSM. Mulder, meanwhile, was the "Golden Boy" who turned his back on the establishment. Krycek wanted to be the hero of his own story, but he was always the guy stuck doing the laundry for the villains.
What Really Happened in the End?
Krycek’s death in the Season 8 finale, "Existence," felt like the end of an era.
By this point, he was desperate. He tried to kill Mulder one last time, claiming it was the only way to stop the "Super Soldiers" (the new alien-human hybrids). He gave this long, rambling speech about how "one bullet will give a thousand lives."
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Skinner didn't buy it. He shot Krycek right between the eyes.
Even in death, Krycek wouldn't stay away. He appeared as a ghost/hallucination to Mulder in the series finale, "The Truth," helping him escape a military base. It was a fitting end for a character who lived in the gray areas of life and death for nearly a decade.
The Krycek Legacy: What You Can Take Away
Alex Krycek teaches us that in a world of grand conspiracies, the most dangerous person isn't the guy at the top of the pyramid. It's the guy on the stairs who’s willing to trip you.
If you’re revisiting the series, keep an eye on these specific episodes to see the evolution of the Ratboy:
- Sleepless (2x04): The debut. Look at how clean-cut he is.
- Anasazi (2x25): The turning point where he kills Bill Mulder.
- Tunguska / Terma (4x08/4x09): The Russian arc and the loss of the arm.
- The Red and the Black (5x14): The height of his double-dealing and that infamous kiss.
- Existence (8x21): The final showdown with Skinner.
Don't just watch him as a villain. Watch him as a mirror to Mulder—a version of what happens when you have all the secrets but none of the soul.
To get the most out of Krycek’s complicated history, try mapping his allegiances across Season 5 and 6. You’ll find he switches sides roughly every twenty minutes, usually right before someone tries to kill him. It makes for a great drinking game if you're into that sort of thing.