The X-Files Villain Killed By The Incredible Hulk
If you’re a fan of The X-Files, then you may have noticed a very familiar face in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. Serving under Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky is a commando whose name we never learn and who doesn’t survive the encounter with Edward Norton’s Hulk in the Brazilian bottling factory. This is Chris Owens, who is much better known as FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Spender, a recurring antagonist in The X-Files.
Chris Owens Before Agent Spender
Before he played either Agent Spender on The X-Files or the commando in The Incredible Hulk, Chris Owens made his X-Files premiere as the younger version of the Carl Gerhard Busch, aka the Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM) in Season 4’s “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” and reprised the role for “Demons.”
Early in Season 5, he played a less villainous but much more memorable role. In “The Post-Modern Prometheus,” it was Chris Owens under all the prosthetics as the monster known as Mutato.
Chris Owens As The Anti-Mulder
It’s in Season 5’s “Patient X” that Chris Owens makes his X-Files debut as Agent Spender, a decade before his role in The Incredible Hulk.
Spender is the Anti-Mulder—an FBI Agent with memories of childhood encounters with aliens, but memories he’s convinced were all forced upon him by his mother. When Mulder and Scully are reassigned from the X-Files at the end of Season 5, it’s Spender who’s put in charge of the section, and who dutifully ignores every report he receives of unexplained phenomena.
We eventually learn that—fittingly, considering his first X-Files role—Spender is the son of the mysterious Cigarette Smoking Man. Since it’s later confirmed that Mulder is also the son of CSM, it makes Spender and Mulder half-brothers.
The Scarred Spender
While Chris Owens’ characters is shot in the face by CSM, he returns to The X-Files both before and after his time in The Incredible Hulk.
He shows up in Season 9, revealing that while he retains a horrible scar that he actually survived his father’s attempt to murder him. The X-Files revival sees another return in the 2018 Season 11 premiere, with Spender’s scars not quite as horrific as they were previously.
The Incredible Hulk
The X-Files star doesn’t have a huge role in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, but his face is prominently on screen several times during the commandos’ trip to Rio de Janeiro, their race through the city after Bruce Banner, and the bottling factory battle.
Like all the commandos except Emil Blonsky, Chris Owens’ soldier doesn’t live to see the outside of the bottling factory. He plays one of the final three to fall victim to the Hulk—crushed beneath a metal vat the man-monster hurls at them.
Other Roles
While his X-Files role likely remains the one Chris Owens is most well known for, he’s still working, including in sci-fi and comic book adaptations beyond The Incredible Hulk.
He was the UN Scientist Kolvoord in The Expanse, Karl Urban’s William Cooper hangs him in 2010’s RED, and even before he was getting smashed by the Hulk he appeared in an episode of the often forgotten Marvel show Mutant X.
