Befitting of a show currently airing it’s 11th season, The X-Files has featured hundreds of monsters, aliens, creatures, killers, and conspiracies over the last 25 years. With so many eerie episodes in the X-Files canon, the show is a bit of a shape-shifter (just like those alien bounty hunters!). It’s a creepy procedural where FBI agents solve whodunits (who did it: monsters). Or it’s a conspiracy thriller about a wide-reaching government plot to sell mankind out to aliens. Sometimes it’s a kooky comedy with pizza delivery boy vampires! The point is, you can go down many tonal paths with this show and find plenty of episodes to scratch your specific storytelling itch. Tonight’s episode, “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” is the latest entry in my own personal favorite path: the Darin Morgan path.

Diehard X-Philes know what I’m talking about, and when they read the name “Darin Morgan,” a series of series-best moments and beloved characters pop into their head. X-Files launched more than a few big name TV writers, Homeland EPs Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon and Breaking Bad mastermind Vince Gilligan to name but a few, which just makes the fan reverence for Darin Morgan all the more unlikely. But just like the offbeat underdogs that populate his episodes, Morgan’s installments are the bewildering weirdos that you can’t help but root for. And if you’re looking for a batch of episodes to prove just how weird and wonderful X-Files can be, there’s really no better road to follow than the one walked by Morgan.

Ahead of the premiere of his sixth installment in the X-Files mythology, here’s a run-through of the episodes that made Darin Morgan the X-Files writer to watch.

"Humbug" (2x20) Morgan’s tenure with the show actually begins a bit earlier than this game-changer from late in Season 2. Darin’s brother Glen Morgan was one of the first writers on the show, penning early creep-out classics like “Squeeze” and “Ice” with his writing partner James Wong. Darin’s first writing credit on the show is for the story of the Glen Morgan / James Wong jam “Blood.” Oh, and he also played the Flukeman in “The Host.” So yeah, the best X-Files episodes were written by its creepiest original monster! Darin Morgan’s first solo writing credit came later in Season 2, with the episode “Humbug.” In it, FBI Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate a series of murders at a community of ex-sideshow performers. The episode is memorable for a number of reasons, like the puzzle-tattooed, fish-eating Enigma, and the inclusion of ’90s counterculture mainstay Jim Rose. But “Humbug” really made its mark with its tone, which was lighter than the show had previously attempted, albeit still macabre like any good X-Files ep. Morgan’s debut episode proved that the show could go for laughs while not betraying its horror core. Watch "Humbug" on Hulu

"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (3x04) With his second X-Files episode, Morgan knocked it outta the park (kinda like that alien baseball player!). Mulder and Scully are hot on the trail of a serial killer targeting fortune tellers and psychics when they come across help from an unlikely source: Clyde Bruckman (Peter Boyle), a cynical life insurance salesman cursed with the ability to see when everyone around him will die. Whereas “Humbug” brought the jokes, “Clyde Bruckman” brings the darkness with character moments pulled directly from Morgan’s own bout with depression. Oh, and the episode is also responsible for that whole “Scully is immortal” theory that Morgan himself doesn’t even believe. Not only is “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” most people’s favorite Darin Morgan episode, it is widely considered to be the best episode of the series, period. “Clyde Bruckman” has the statues to back up its revered status. This episode won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series in 1996, and Peter Boyle won Outstanding Actor in a Guest Role for his portrayal of the titular curmudgeon. Watch "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" on Hulu

"War of the Coprophages" (3x12) This light War of the Worlds pastiche follows Mulder as he unintentionally finds himself in a small town dealing with an outbreak of what appear to be killer cockroaches. This one strikes a balance between the light and dark of “Humbug” and “Clyde Bruckman,” proving that Morgan can also handle the gross out thrills X-Files also regularly provided. Seriously, I could have done without seeing a cockroach burrow inside of a stoned teen’s wrist! The episode really plays into Morgan’s specific takes on Mulder and Scully too. In all of his episodes, the usually brooding and charismatic Mulder is humiliated ever so slightly, be it Jim Rose knocking his catalogue-ready good looks in “Humbug” or Mulder immediately falling for a researcher named (no joke) Bambi Bernebaum in this one. Gillian Anderson, on the other hand, gets to really lay into Scully’s take-charge tendencies in these episodes, like when she tries to calm a convenience store full of panicking townspeople. Watch "War of the Coprophages" on Hulu

"Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" (3x20) While I love “Clyde Bruckman” dearly, my personal all-time favorite Morgan episode (and also my favorite X-File ever) has to be “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,'” a perception-twisting tale about an alien abduction… and the abduction that occurred during that abduction. The episode follows sci-fi writer Jose Chung, played with equal parts pizzazz and drama by theatre icon Charles Nelson Reilly, as he interviews all the major players in the abduction-within-an-abduction case. Along the way he learns about two different sets of Men in Black, watches an alien autopsy video beside a mortified Scully, and hears the story of Lord Kinbote. The episode is everything that is great about The X-Files, from great Mulder and Scully scenes (Mulder’s yelp, Scully’s intimidation tactics) to laugh-out-loud moments (“A bleepin’ dead alien”) and truly horrifying sequences (those greys!). And it’s all held together by Reilly, a man known for his ’70s tenure as a glorious game show panelist who creates a multi-layered character while mostly remaining seated in a chair. I mean, I’m biased towards this one because I love CNR. He’s the GIF on my author page, for crying out loud. While this would be Morgan’s last writing credit on the original run, he did do an uncredited rewrite on “Quagmire” (3×22), which–like all of Morgan’s eps–includes Easter eggs to his other work. Morgan also appeared on-camera as a shape-shifting loser in the Vince Gilligan-written episode “Small Potatoes” (4×20). Watch "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" on Hulu