After several months of teasing the prospect of The X-Files’ return, Fox recently made it official, picking up a six-episode miniseries nearly 13 years after creator/showrunner Chris Carter pulled the plug on the original series (if the studio had had its way, there’s a small-but-nonetheless-solid chance the show would still be on the air to this day).
On the one hand, there is much cause for celebration, particularly among the X-Files faithful, who have been waiting for the ultimate conclusion of the series’ mythology ever since the second of its theatrical movies, 2008’s I Want to Believe, killed off the possibility of an open-ended, ongoing feature film franchise (which was admittedly patterned off of the first two Star Trek shows’ filmic afterlives). Even though D-Day for the alien colonization of planet Earth – December 22, 2012 – has long come and gone, there is still a large possibility for closure, particularly if the new television run is set in the time period leading up to the expected fall of man.
On the other hand, however, there is more than enough room for concern, and it has everything to do with how creatively uneven the last few seasons of X-Files’ original run proved to be and the fact that Carter has been hired on to oversee the new production.