"The Blessing Way" featured guest appearances by Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Peter Donat and Jerry Hardin, and introduced John Neville as the Well-Manicured Man.
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 this episode, Mulder is found near death on a Navajo reservation, and is nursed back to health by the tribe, led by Albert Hosteen (Westerman).
"The Blessing Way" is part of a three-episode storyline, carrying on from the second season finale "Anasazi", and continuing in the next episode, "Paper Clip".
In Two Grey Hills, New Mexico, Albert Hosteen (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) and his family are beaten by the Men in Black as they search for the whereabouts of Fox Mulder (David Duchovny).
Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is pursued by a black helicopter before soldiers retrieve her printed copies of Albert's translations of the digital tape, but they cannot find the original.
During the ritual, Mulder has ghostly visions of Deep Throat and his father, who urge him to recover and continue his search for the truth.
Scully presents Skinner with the newspaper article, thinking that the data from Soona's death can clear Mulder in his father's murder.
[1][2] Series creator Chris Carter felt this was one of his favorite episodes to write, as he found it interesting to explore how the character of Fox Mulder would react to the death of his father.
[3] Frank Spotnitz said of the episode "The expectations were very high coming after a summer's worth of anticipation to see how Mulder got out of the boxcar.
We knew we had to answer that question and still leave an intriguing enough dilemma at the end of the show to bring viewers back for the third and final part.
[6] The scenes set in New Mexico were filmed in the same Vancouver quarry that had been used as a stand-in in the previous episode, "Anasazi", the repainting of which required only minor touch-ups.
[7] Visual effects producer Mat Beck considered the sequence where Fox Mulder has a vision of Deep Throat and his father the most difficult of the season.
Sordi noted that the plotline "laid the groundwork for the mythology arc for the rest of the series", adding that it "brought much more significance to what is to come".
The episode was derided for its "corny dream sequence and high-flown cosmic hooey", although the introduction of the Well-Manicured Man and Mitch Pileggi's portrayal of Walter Skinner were seen as highlights.
She felt that the resolution of the cliffhanger from the previous episode "Anasazi"—that of Mulder's apparent death—was poorly handled, and that the character of Albert Hosteen was perhaps the worst in the series.