There is also the very real possibility that Carter and his reassembled writing staff will be able to retroactively finesse the flaws from previous chapters. In addition to seamlessly expanding the purview of the show from the strict confines of Mulder and Scully’s perspective, season eight also went back and inserted several new plot threads into the tragically short-changed seventh season, giving the audience’s favorite characters actually something to do.
There is absolutely no reason why such deft narrative footwork can’t be extended to the period in between the series and Believe. Or, even, strictly during the ninth season, when the menace of the newly reconstituted alien conspiracy was off-screen for nearly the entirety of the year (season eight’s alien replicants can genuinely hold their own against most big-screen baddies, and their absence was sorely – and fatally – felt).
The most promising reason for an X-Flies resurrection, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the series’s mythology and everything to do with its extraordinarily rich standalone episodes. Containing a breadth and a depth that is both stunning and exceptionally rare in television – Carter humbly calls the show’s ability to move from horror to comedy to surreality to drama its elasticity – the hallmark of these so-called monster-of-the-week tales were the installments both written and directed by Carter himself, and the simple possibility of getting yet another “Post-Modern Prometheus,” “Triangle,” or, most especially, “Improbable” should make any fan of the medium light-headed with anticipation.
In this way, ironically enough, Chris Carter is both the strongest element of and the greatest obstacle to The X-Files’ tenth season.