The episode was written by series creator Chris Carter, directed by David Nutter, and featured the first of two guest appearances by Nick Chinlund as the death fetishist killer Donnie Pfaster.
The episode was viewed by 8.8 million people upon its first broadcast, and received positive reviews, with much praise to Chinlund's performance as the antagonist.
The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files.
In the episode, Mulder and Scully investigate a death fetishist who begins kidnapping and killing women to satisfy his obsession.
Some time later, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are summoned to Minneapolis by Moe Bocks, an FBI field agent who is investigating the exhumation and desecration of a body in a local cemetery.
Mulder discounts Bocks' theory that this act is a variation of extraterrestrial cattle mutilation, and suggests they search for a human culprit.
Mulder develops a psychological profile of the criminal, believing him to be an escalating "death fetishist" who may resort to murder to satisfy his desires.
Tracing a fingerprint to Pfaster from his arrest, Bocks and Mulder raid his apartment, finding one of the prostitute's fingers in his refrigerator.
[4] Carter said of the episode's conception, "My first chance to work with David Nutter in a long time, and I wanted to give him something he could sink his teeth into.
"[8] The scene where Dana Scully sees Pfaster morph into a devil was influenced by real-life accounts, as described by Carter: "There are reports of people who had been under the spell of Jeffrey Dahmer, who actually claimed that he shape-shifted during those hours when they were held hostage; that his image actually changed.
"[5] Nutter said "In many ways, Chris wanted to sell the idea that, as established in Mulder's closing dialogue in the show, not all terror comes from the paranormal.
"[8] Carter particularly liked the scene where a clearly disturbed Scully hugs Mulder, claiming it was a "tender moment" between two characters that had not shown that much affection for each other.
Entertainment Weekly rated "Irresistible" a B+, saying it was based on "an unsettling concept to begin with" that was reinforced by "Chinlund's skin-crawling one-man show".
Club rated the episode A, praising the acting, particularly of Chinlund as Pfaster, and describing it as "legitimately scary, a sign of a show that was pushing itself in new and interesting directions".
[13] Writing for Den of Geek, Nina Sordi ranked "Irresistible" the sixth best X-Files episode, saying that "excluding CSM and his cronies, Pfaster has got to be the most disturbing villain that our favorite agents have encountered".
[14] Den of Geek writer Juliette Harrisson named it the "finest" stand-alone episode of the second season, describing it as "a genuinely creepy 45-minute horror movie".
[15] Connie Ogle of Popmatters listed Pfaster among the best monster-of-the-week characters of the series,[16] and IGN's Christine Seghers ranked Chinlund the seventh best guest star in the history of the show, considering that "what makes him all the more frightening is how downright passive and polite he is up until the moment he's going to kill; the perfect camouflage for a modern-day monster.