With Ryan Coogler at the helm, the new series comes at a perfect moment for our post-truth, conspiracy-loving time
In the years since The X Files debuted in 1993, conspiracy theories and paranoia have taken hold of our culture in a way that even the show’s writers couldn’t have predicted. In our post-truth age, every fashion campaign might hold clues about international child trafficking networks, every vaccine could be a government plot for mind control, the list goes on.
To put it another way – 30 years later we’ve become a society of Fox Mulders and Oedipa Maases, determined at every turn to ignore the mundane explanation for something more sinister and fantastic. And it’s no wonder – in a world full of senseless violence and horror, who can blame people for clinging onto any story that gives order and a larger purpose to the random string of events that make up our lives?
Add to all this the ongoing revelations from the Pentagon about UFO sightings and “non-human biological pilots”, and you have the perfect recipe for a new series of the cult television show that first assured us all the truth was out there.
According to Bloomberg, The X Files will be making (another) comeback in the near future, this time with Black Panther director Ryan Coogler at the helm. Developed by Disney, it’s still unclear whether this “new version” of the show will be a continuation of the original series or a reboot although back in March, creator Chris Carter mentioned on a podcast that he had been in talks with Coogler about “remounting” the show with a “diverse cast”.
He continued to say, “We’re so steeped in conspiracies now. The X Files dealt with a central conspiracy, but now the world is so full of conspiracies that I think that it would be a different show.”
Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, who starred as Dana Scully and Fox Mulders in the original series and films, have expressed mixed feelings about a reboot in the past. Last year, Duchovny said there is no show for him if Carter and Anderson aren’t involved. “It’s not something that I necessarily need in my life, to go do that. I think at this point, I mean, there might be another iteration of the actual show without either of us.”
Meanwhile, Anderson told Variety that she would want the new show to be a different beast from the original and sees her involvement as more of a passing of the torch. “In order to even begin to have that conversation [about another season] there would need to be a whole new set of writers and the baton would need to be handed on for it to feel like it was new and progressive.”
Whatever the form the new series takes, it is exciting news for all of us who want to believe. While we wait for more news, read about the strange mystery of this X Files song from 1998 that finally got solved last week here. Or the script that was too bleak to air here.