The X-Files is Indeed Returning with Six New Episodes

The truth isn’t done yet…

According to Deadline, the announcement is official. The X-Files will indeed return. Series creator Chris Carter and Fox have struck a deal to create a six-episode miniseries event. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have agreed to reprise their roles as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Production on the miniseries (which can, perhaps, also be seen as the show’s official 10th season) will begin over the summer. There is no word yet as to the involvement of any other old cast members.

Chris Carter has said that the 13-year gap from the end of the series to the premiere of the miniseries should be considered an extended commercial break. Well, I suppose with one brief return in 2008, with the theatrical release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

I am excited for the returns of the show, as I was a huge fan in the 1990s. I am also a little bit ambivalent. The X-Files was very much about disaffection with the government and paranoia, both of which were very much results of the post-Cold War milieu of the time. Chris Carter will have to do more than merely allow Mulder and Scully back into screens to make The X-Files relevant again. He will have to somehow parlay that 1990s paranoia into a ’10s mindset. In an era of overwhelming internet ubiquity, pop positivity, and scads of millennials, what kind of stories need to be told?

Also set to return: The Liver Fluke Man. Well, not really, but we can dream.