A lot is going on in Shadows. We don’t see much in the way of character-building with Mulder and Scully, but there are some fun tropes here. There’s the odd cemetery worker, the no-nonsense medical examiner, and the nameless G-Men. Some of these one-off character types would be used in later episodes, but it’s funny to see them all in one episode.

This was the first time ghosts are the subject of an episode, and the explanation of how the spirit interacts with the corporeal world is embellished but somewhat accurate.

A moment that stands out for me is when Scully comforts Lauren as if she believes her, much to Mulder’s shock, only for it to be a calculated move by Scully to get the woman to blow the whistle on her company's shady dealings. This shows that even Dana Scully is capable of playing on people’s emotions to solve a case, while Mulder almost looks sympathetic this time.

This installment touches upon grief and how we handle the passing of loved ones, but where this episode truly shows its current relevance is how it portrays the treatment of whistle-blowers. Overall, good episode. It has some deep things going on.

Disturbing Moment: The scene where the assassins are killed by an invisible force might be intense for some, especially when the woman's throat is crushed by an invisible hand.