“Who cares?”
This simple question, asked in the last title card of Millennium’s opening credits, challenges its characters as much as it does us viewers. Since its premiere, Millennium (1996-1999), a series created by Chris Carter of The X-Files fame, made it clear that it would be wrestling with the theme of evil in a way never before seen on network television. Edmund Burke’s famous line, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” is just one of many responses to darkness illustrated by the series’ fascinating exploration of serial killers, eschatology, and millennialism of all stripes, writ large against a cosmically mysterious, often profoundly unsettling universe.
