It’s spring. Seemingly without warning, a highly contagious, deadly virus begins spreading like wildfire in the United States. Some believe it’s the beginning of the Apocalypse while others fear it’s a controlled biological agent. Panic ensues.

This description comes not from recent events but from the two part season finale of the series Millennium, which aired in May 1998. Chris Carter’s followup to The X-Files had launched as a darker, more realistic examination of more realistic horrors– namely serial killers– but under the season two direction of Glen Morgan and James Wong, the scope had expanded to include all manner of strange and apocalyptic phenomena, from prophets to clones to ghosts. Their distinct arc for the season had Frank Black (the incomparable Lance Henriksen) facing a personal apocalypse– separation from his wife and daughter– that eventually collides with a global one in the form of the deadly Marburg Virus, a fictionalized version of an actual virus (inspired by the then recent Ebola virus, which originates from the same family as the real Marburg).

Apart from Ebola and Mad Cow disease, the virus plotline was one that had become increasingly popular in film and television. Everything from 1971’s The Andromeda Strain to 1996’s Escape from LA had featured deadly contagions as either main or supporting plot elements. I suspect this had become increasingly common not just because of the history of diseases, from the Black Plague to the Spanish Flu, but because of widespread belief that another major outbreak was inevitable. Morgan and Wong had based the storyline on their research into likely apocalyptic scenarios; by the time of Covid-19, scientists had been warning that we were overdue for such an event. 

Luckily for us, Covid-19 is nowhere near as deadly as Millennium’s Marburg Virus. In the cold open of “The Fourth Horseman,” directed by Dwight Little (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers), a farmer in 1986 is horrified to discover his chickens have all died gruesomely; before he can alert anyone, he himself sweats blood through his skin, collapses, and dies. In the present, Frank Black and his associate Peter Watts (Terry O’Quinn) investigate a man’s mysterious death from massive blood loss; the medical examiner suspects a viral pathogen and has all three men quarantined. 

In the episode’s central sequence, we see a wholesome, all American family gathering for Mother’s Day. The banter about sports and Mom’s hokey taste in music is almost a parody of a TV family, but an ominous note is struck when the dog turns up with a dead bird in its mouth. The camera focuses meaningfully on the chicken sizzling on the grill; at the table, the clan has barely begun eating when they all begin to bleed and collapse, and the father tries to dial 911 with a blood soaked hand before succumbing to the virus. The dulcet sounds of Dionne Warwick play over the grisly tableau. Twenty four years later, it’s still one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen on television– and it aired on network TV.

Frank later comes to realize that the Millennium Group, while supposedly drawing blood from him and Peter in quarantine, has secretly injected them with a vaccine. He later learns that only members of the group have been given the vaccine, and not their families; I couldn’t help but recall this element when wild stories circulated online suggesting that “they” already had a Covid vaccine for the privileged few. The episode ends eerily with an earthquake striking at the exact time the group had predicted.

In “The Time Is Now,” directed by Thomas J. Wright, the viral outbreak escalates and prompts the Black family– Frank, wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher), and daughter Jordan (Brittany Tiplady)– to flee to a remote cabin in the woods. Jordan has inherited her father’s gift/curse of second sight, and has had prophetic dreams about the origins of the virus, her family’s flight to the cabin, and Catherine’s walking off into the woods and leaving her and Frank alone. 

Following the horrific family massacre in “The Fourth Horseman,” this episode contains another bravura sequence, which I consider the most stunning scene I’ve ever seen on television. Frank and Peter’s colleague Lara Means (Kristen Cloke, Final Destination) has disappeared after leaving Frank a series of cryptic voicemails. She’s been granted access to the inner circle of the Millennium group and hinted at wondrous, terrible secrets she’s been given access to. These revelations concern future events and the end of the world. Secluded in another cabin, Lara rolls dice over and over, taking notes on the outcome. As Patti Smith’s beautiful and bizarre “Land” plays over the soundtrack, Lara experiences a hallucinatory, terrifying series of visions: angels, exploding buildings, drowning, and horses– suggesting the four horsemen of the Apocalypse– accompanied by Smith’s singing “horses! horses! horses!” By the time a demon bursts into the cabin– it’s actually Frank coming to her aid– Lara has lost her mind. It’s a visceral and emotional triumph of editing and mood– more than a “music video,” the scene amounts to a nightmarish, beautiful short film.

Lara leaves Frank an envelope containing her vaccine; he and Catherine quickly decide they will give it to Jordan. I rewatched this episode last spring, and as the couple stand over the sleeping Jordan, holding each other for support, I couldn’t help but think of myself and my partner. We, too, relied on each while holed up in our apartment, waiting out a devastating and frightening plague. Never could I have imagined that I would one day watch this episode and relate to it.

Catherine wakes up in the middle of the night to discover blood on her pillow and face; somberly, she says goodbye to her sleeping family and wanders into the woods to die, just as Frank had told her he would do to spare them the agony of his death. The next day Frank figures out what’s happened and goes outside to find his wife; returning from the forest, he’s embraced by his daughter, who giggles at his newly white hair. Flashes of static and panicked news reports are interspersed with a glassy-eyed, grief stricken Frank and his motherless child. “In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus),” a creepy 60s song concerning future scenarios and the Second Coming, plays over these chilling final moments.

The worldwide apocalypse depicted in these Millennium episodes is eclipsed by the personal one Frank experiences: he loses his wife, and Jordan loses her mom. This scenario repeated in homes across the country and the world over the past year, as people lost friends and family to Covid-19. The virus may not have marked the end of the world, but it was a terrifying and devastating end to far too many lives. In this way Millennium was heartbreakingly prescient.