The X-Files Is Back. Please Tell Us They Still Don’t Believe Each Other

The truth is still out there. Apparently, so is The X-Files.

Hulu has officially ordered Ryan Coogler’s new version of the classic sci-fi series, with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel playing two FBI agents assigned to a long-shuttered division investigating unexplained phenomena. Coogler wrote and directed the pilot, while original creator Chris Carter is involved as an executive producer. It will stream on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK, although there is no release date yet. Which all sounds promising. But please tell us one thing. They still don’t believe each other.

Because The X-Files was never really just about aliens, monsters, government conspiracies or whatever unpleasant creature happened to be living underneath a small American town that week. The real engine of the show was the relationship between Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Mulder wanted to believe. Scully wanted evidence. He looked at flashing lights in the sky and immediately assumed extraterrestrial intervention. She could watch somebody levitate six feet above the floor while speaking backwards and still suggest they run some blood tests.

That friction made everything work.

The smartest thing about Coogler’s version is that it does not appear to be recasting Mulder and Scully. Deadwyler and Patel are playing entirely new characters, described simply as two highly decorated but “vastly different” FBI agents who form an unlikely bond while investigating the unexplained. That gives the new series room to inherit the idea without simply asking two actors to impersonate David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson.

And Coogler feels like an intriguing choice to bring it back. Sinners, Black Panther and Creed all showed his ability to take familiar genres and make them feel personal, emotional and culturally specific. That matters because The X-Files cannot survive purely on nostalgia. We have already had eleven seasons, two movies and a previous revival. Another shadowy warehouse full of government files is not enough.

The world around the show has also changed dramatically since Mulder first stuck an “I Want to Believe” poster on his office wall in 1993. Conspiracy theories once felt slightly fringe and exciting. Now millions of people can discover one before breakfast, join an online community devoted to it by lunch and spend the evening arguing that a blurry TikTok video proves the moon has been replaced.

That makes the old Mulder-Scully dynamic even more interesting. Who is the sceptic now?

In a world where everyone has a camera in their pocket, AI can manufacture convincing images and the internet can turn almost anything into “evidence”, perhaps believing is no longer the rebellious position. Maybe the brave person is the one asking for proof.

That is why the reboot has real potential. Coogler does not need to recreate the original show exactly. He needs to recreate the argument at its heart: faith versus evidence, instinct versus science, paranoia versus reason. Then throw in something horrible living in a sewer.

If they get that balance right, The X-Files does not need Mulder and Scully. It just needs two people who can look at the same impossible thing and completely disagree about what they saw.