Writing for The Vindicator, Eric Mink felt that the episode was "intense, unsettling, sometimes gross, and suspenseful to the point of nerve-racking ", feeling that its plot would "resonate instantly and ominously with viewers". Meghan Deans of Tor.com felt that, while the episode did unfortunately reduce Scully down to a traditional idea of feminine identity for part of its run, it was "one of the most emotional Scully-centric episodes the show has ever given us." Furthermore, Deans reasoned that the episode was an example of "what The X-Files would have been, had Scully been the believer: a woman being told that she is hysterical, a woman being told that she imagined it all [and] a woman being told that the evidence of her own body is invalid", a direction that would have been "startling ".
