Speculation abounded that a season 12 of The X-Files was looming on Hulu.
Fortunately, it seems to be false, a product of a fan-made poster that circulated around social media and generated scuttlebutt.
There is a planned X-Files reboot, but it’s not headed by original X-Files creator Chris Carter, but by Black Panther director Ryan Coogler.
Coogler was also behind the woefully overrated Creed, a soft reboot in the Rocky universe focusing on Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son, Adonis Creed, and his desire to box because, you know … well, reasons.
Coogler’s cultivated an interesting CV. Fruitvale Station is a great movie; Black Panther is like much of Marvel’s later fare – extremely solid in construction, but remarkably average as a viewing experience.
Can he work some magic around The X-Files?
Well, I don’t really care.
The Original
The X-Files debuted in 1993 – about two years before the internet became as common to households as toasters.
It explored a niche premise that became a surprise hit thanks to three factors:
a quirky lead in David Duchovny. They could not have found somebody better for the role of an iconoclastic agent who didn’t quite fit in the system.
Gillian Anderson: Anderson’s developed a remarkable CV playing a variety of roles. She’s a fantastic actress who helped ground the series.
the subject matter – UFOs, the supernatural, etc. – generally hadn’t been explored seriously in a television series. The closest would’ve been The X-Files’ inspiration, Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
Every TV show, every movie, every play, every piece of art featuring actors tries to get the casting right. The X-Files nailed it. It’s not as easy as it seems. Who hasn’t seen a TV show or movie where the casting hasn’t quite worked? Or where you have good actors but they have no chemistry?
Also, I wonder how the subject matter will play now in an age we have drones inundating the US, the US government has openly acknowledged UFOs, podcasts like Joe Rogan’s feature guests regularly talking about this stuff, and the internet is at all our disposal if we really want to perform a deep dive into these topics.
The Mythology
I’m going on memory, and it’s been like thirty years, but I recall the first two seasons of The X-Files being captivating, and the third grew tired as everything ratcheted into some Government conspiracy, and Scully always ran in two seconds after Mulder had encountered something unexplainable.
After season two, producers James Wong and Glen Morgan left to head their own show, the underrated Space: Above and Beyond, but after that died an inglorious but undeserved death, they returned to The X-Files for season four, and reinvigorated the show. The conspiracies were pared back, and we just got more weird.
But the foundation of the show remained the mystery about the UFOs, the disappearance of Fox Mulder’s sister, Samantha, and who the mysterious Consortium who were serving some unknown agenda.
As the show went on (and on), it became a mess of contradicting mythologies, like Chris Carter wanted to draw from every alien narrative there is out there and weave it into his overarching story.
The Cigarette Smoking Man
It was around season five or six when The X-Files chief antagonist, the Cigarette Smoking Man (brilliant casting again with William B. Davis) made Fox Mulder a proposition: join him and learn everything he ever wanted to know.
Being moral or something, Mulder declined.
Then the show just kept repeating its formula: Mulder and Scully investigated, Mulder would see something Scully didn’t, and it all grew entangled in the conspiracy.
Creatively, Mulder should’ve accepted – even as a double agent. Somebody’s making you the offer to reveal everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the UFO phenomenon, and you don’t take him up?
It certainly would’ve made for more interesting storylines, although it might’ve meant writing Duchovny out of the story permanently.
Back then, television didn’t do that – it neither wrote out stars who were hot, nor messed with something that was working. After all, series ran as long as they could, rather than fit into some limited concept as most of them do now.
But Cigarette Smoking Man’s offer would’ve been a good time to galvanize something that felt like it didn’t have much else to do – at least with the Mulder and Scully pairing.
A Show Gone Too Long
In season eight, David Duchovny left. Gillian Anderson reduced her involvement in season nine. We got two new agents, John Doggett (played by Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish). Go back to what I wrote about casting and chemistry. Doggett was okay, although he was appreciated by Patrick’s brilliant performance. Reyes was bland, albeit through no fault of Gish’s.
Then the show died.
Until 2016, where we got a six-episode season 10, and a ten-episode season 11 in 2018. One of these seasons introduced two newer younger agents – I can’t remember which season, or what their names were. That says something.
These two new seasons retconned the original run and depreciated it so that it became ordinary. Not many series can revisit a premise with great success, as shows like Frasier, Picard, Arrested Development, Twin Peaks, and a litany of others have proven.
The biggest problem with The X-Files is that it remained open ended. There was never any time we’d reach a finale that would give us our answers. So things kept being pushed and pushed and pushed until they grew tired and confused.
So … the reboot?
My biggest issue with reboots is they somehow have to compare to or outdo the original.
It’d be nice if Hollywood took a concept that didn’t quite work and rebooted it, addressing the issue(s). They’ve sorta unwittingly done that with superhero flicks. For example, Batman & Robin killed the original franchise, so Christopher Nolan rebooted it and grounded it, ensuring there were no campy elements.
But in the case of something working, where do you go with it? Whoever’s cast in the new X-Files will be compared to Duchovny and Anderson. We live in a world which isn’t as compartmentalized for information anymore.
Could the rebooted X-Files do something more interesting, for example, than listening to Navy pilots David Fravor and Ryan Graves – credible, trained pros from the US navy – talk about their UFO encounters on various podcasts?
Good luck to Coogler, but I’m not optimistic.