Rough though the first hour may have been, FOX’s X-Files revival quickly bounced back with an effective stand-alone episode, one to be followed next Monday by a critical favorite. Whatever you make of the six-episode season’s curious sandwiching of mythology episodes, you might not have realized that “Founder’s Mutation” was intended to run much later, and now creator Chris Carter explains why.

You’re warned of basic X-Files return spoilers through the first two (aired) episodes, but if Mulder and Scully seemed further along into their FBI return than expected of a second hour, it might be because “Founder’s Mutation” was originally scheduled as the season’s fifth episode. The hour layered in a few mythology elements of Mulder and Scully’s absent son William to a largely isolated case, but in doing so helped smooth the transition, Carter tells TVInsider:

Because we have a story arc that runs through the middle of the series…we were concerned that, coming right off a mythology episode [and] going right into a standalone episode, people would say, ‘What’s happened? So, it actually worked out. It served episode 2 better to replace it with 5. It created a better continuity.

For those already gone cross-eyed, next week’s third episode “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-monster” will air in its intended place, followed by “Home Again” (previously the second episode), “Babylon” (previously the fourth episode), concluding with mythology return “My Struggle II.”

Of course, the change in schedule creates at least some continuity issues with “Home Again,” of which Carter says “a sliver” had to be excised. “It’s not even a deleted scene, It was lines of dialogue.”

Time will tell if the latter two stand-alones hold up as well as the first, or if “My Struggle II” will over any real answers or closure, but does changing the order speak to anything about the structure of our brief X-Files revival?