Hulu has seen the evidence and decided to believe. On Tuesday 13 October it ordered Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files to series. That ends eight months of the project sitting in the pilot stage, which for this franchise is roughly the time it takes a cigarette to burn down in a Pentagon basement.
Coogler (Sinners, Black Panther) wrote, directed and executive-produced the pilot. Jennifer Yale is the showrunner, and the series comes from Coogler’s Proximity Media, Onyx Collective and 20th Television. Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel lead the cast. Hulu describes them as “two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents” who form “an unlikely bond” after being assigned to a long-shuttered division for unexplained phenomena. If that sounds familiar, it’s meant to. The office has stood empty since 2018. Somebody has presumably taken down the “I Want to Believe” poster and put up one of those motivational prints of a kayak.
The pilot’s supporting cast is splendidly eccentric. According to Bleeding Cool, it includes Steve Buscemi, Amy Madigan, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro and Tantoo Cardinal. Buscemi, an actor who already looks as if he has been abducted at least twice, is a particularly inspired piece of casting. Consequence reports that Ludwig Göransson, Coogler’s regular composer, scored the pilot. Whether he can resist whistling those six famous notes remains a mystery for the ages.
Creator Chris Carter is now listed as an executive producer. That’s a promotion from 2024, when he said his role would be “cheerleader”. He has told Consequence that he hasn’t yet seen the reboot, which is the most X-Files thing about the whole business: a man kept in the dark about his own conspiracy.
What fans most want to know is whether Mulder and Scully will turn up, and the answer is a firm “possibly”. Gillian Anderson has read the script and says “if the phone rings, it’s good”. David Duchovny says there’s “nothing concrete at this point”. Both remarks come from earlier interviews rather than reactions to this week’s news, so for now the files on the original agents stay marked “pending”. Coogler himself says, “I’ve loved The X-Files for a long time, so getting the chance to write and direct the pilot has meant a great deal to me”. He has also promised a mix of monster-of-the-week episodes and an overarching conspiracy. Readers of a nervous disposition should start preparing themselves for a Flukeman remake now.
British viewers get a home-grown agent. Patel, born in Huntingdon and best known for Station Eleven, Yesterday and a long stint in EastEnders, becomes the first Brit to work the basement. Britain did have its own man in the field: Nick Pope, who investigated UFO reports for the Ministry of Defence and told SFcrowsnest all about it.
Coogler’s real problem isn’t the aliens but reality. When the series began on Fox in September 1993, believing in UFOs got you exiled to the basement with a slide projector. Since then the Pentagon has opened an office to study them, and Congress holds hearings on unidentified aerial phenomena between budget debates. A conspiracy drama is harder to write when the government keeps cheerfully admitting it is looking into the matter. On the plus side, Agent Patel will never be short of paperwork.
There is no premiere date yet. Coogler is also due to direct Black Panther III, so the series is unlikely to land before 2027. Trust no one, and especially not anyone who gives you a release date.
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