In the early 1990s, a small genre series about UFOs and paranormal phenomena, inspired by the short-lived Kolchak, premiered on Fox. Despite airing on the "Friday night death slot," this new series, mysteriously named The X-Files, pulled in 12 million viewers and quickly became one of the highest-rated television programs of the era. Though it never reached the "top 10 in viewership," the series came close on more than one occasion, and over the years grew a strong cult following that justified two feature films, two revival seasons, various comic books, video games, and more. Needless to say, The X-Files is something of a cultural phenomenon, and it's not hard to understand why.

The show primarily followed David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully who were assigned to the basement "X-Files" unit where they were cursed to investigate the weird and unexplained. Of course, this was Mulder's dream assignment as he spent his entire career building the means to investigate the childhood abduction of his younger sister, who he believes was taken by aliens. Though Mulder and Scully investigate everything from stretchy mutants and homicidal talking tattoos to demonic creatures and inbred hillbillies, The X-Files is most well-known for diving straight into a government conspiracy surrounding the secrecy of extra-terrestrial life.

Having grown up in the Watergate era of political distrust emphasized by films such as All The President's Men, series creator Chris Carter — a man who has a knack for telling stories that feel shockingly real — admittedly believes in conspiracies, the possibility of alien life, and that the government actively lies to the American people. These beliefs no doubt influenced his work on The X-Files, and given his youthful exposure to the infamous Nixon scandal, it's no wonder Mulder's first informant was dubbed Deep Throat. "I’m a child of Watergate," Carter wrote in a 2021 New York Times piece discussing his skepticism regarding the government's disclosure of UFOs. "Do I believe in conspiracies? Certainly. I believe, for example, that someone is targeting C.I.A. agents and White House officials with microwave radiation, the so-called Havana syndrome, and your government denied it." Nevertheless, The X-Files is still a work of fiction, or at least it's meant to be.

RELATED: This Is ‘The X-Files’ Most Underappreciated Episode

Are Today's Headlines Telling Us to Trust No One?

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in The X-Files both looking at something, shocked.
Image via FOX

We live in very conflicted times. Between anxious 24-hour news cycles, endless doom scrolling on social media, and increasingly volatile political campaigns, it can be difficult to discern fact from fiction, and likewise friend from foe. Having to filter through media bias just to secure simple facts can be exhausting and disheartening. Like Mulder, many of us "trust no one," which makes sense when you consider that typing "does milk cause acne?" and then "does milk give you clear skin?" into your nearest search engine will result in "evidence" that supports either claim (go ahead, try it). Maybe it should be hard to trust media outlets that seemingly read from the same script, even after Conan O'Brien makes a joke about it.

With both sides of the coin promoting conspiracy theories that may or may not prove true, The X-Files can feel like either a comfort or a frightening look at “the other side” depending on which theory it is that you're examining. Baring taglines like "The Truth Is Out There" and "Deny Everything" at the tail-end of the opening credits, the series never shied away from exploring government overreach or criticizing the military-industrial complex. Because of the show's boldness to dive head-first into the fringe space, contemporary critics have wondered if we have taken the show "too seriously." Make no mistake, The X-Files was not the first or only Hollywood production to meditate on the power of conspiracy theories — Oliver Stone's JFK hit theaters a few years prior — and even if it were, most still categorize Mulder and Scully's adventures strictly under "fiction," even if there is some occasional overlap.

According to a 2018 study conducted by faculty members from the University of Cambridge and Université Libre de Bruxelles, it was determined that there is no evidence that watching The X-Files contributes one iota to belief in conspiracy theories, not that we expected there would be. "The present studies suggest that exposure to strongly conspiracist fiction does not lead to greater endorsement of [conspiracy theories] related to the narrative, contrary to the results of other research showing that narratives could influence endorsement of controversial beliefs and attitudes." For the most part, the average person can still separate a show like The X-Files from their surrounding reality, it's only when fact and fiction collide that we begin to question the official narrative.

The Truth Really Is Out There — on 'The X-Files' and Beyond

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in X-Files Season 3, Episode 8
Image via FOX

It's easy to look back at The X-Files now and read in our contemporary sensibilities nearly 30 years after it first premiered, but even then, not everything was exactly fictional. In the third season episode "Paper Clip," Mulder mentions the U.S. government operation of the same name that secretly brought Nazi scientists to America after World War II. Paperclip, originally called Operation Overcast, was a program the general American public didn't know much about until after President Clinton's Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. Likewise, Project MK-Ultra, the CIA's illegal mind-control experiments mentioned in the revival episode "Kitten," was thought to be nothing more than a conspiracy theory for decades. That is until it was finally exposed over 20 years after the project first began in 1953.

But these aren't the only government lies or conspiracies that The X-Files touched on, whether knowingly or not. The show's take on government surveillance proceeded Edward Snowden's whistleblowing by nearly 20 years, which exposed the NSA's all-seeing eye on the American people. The Season 5 episode "The Pine Bluff Variant" sees Mulder–who ironically was experiencing a crisis of faith at the time–infiltrate a militia group filled with government agents, hoping to use bioweapons to incite terrorism. Though admittedly a bit different, The Intercept reported on a similar FBI conspiracy in 2015 that involved using informants to incite potential terrorists on American soil.

Couple all this with recent UFO disclosures, the idea that there may be an alien mothership in our solar system, and the fact that Illuminati spelled backward with a ".com" at the end takes you directly to the CIA's website (seriously, try it out), Fox Mulder would have a field day with the world we find ourselves in. In truth, science fiction has always been slightly prophetic, be it the Star Trek communicators that predated cell phones or the hunter-seekers in Dune that foreshadowed the advent of drones. And let's not forget how The Lone Gunmen (an The X-Files spin-off) aired an episode with a plot eerily similar to the September 11th terrorist attacks, just months before they happened. To be frank, there is a clear connection between entertainment and reality, it's where they intersect that remains blurred and often unknowable.

'The X-Files' Needed Both a Conspiracy Theorist and a Skeptic

the-x-files-social-feature
Image via Fox

Perhaps that's the reason that The X-Files needed someone like Dana Scully, who represents the critical (or skeptical) mind. Willing to follow Mulder anywhere, Scully doesn't necessarily believe everything that comes out of her partner's mouth, but she's willing to entertain his questions. Especially early on, Scully works to debunk and disprove their paranormal circumstances. Of course, oftentimes Mulder is proven right (this is television after all), but not always in the ways that he thinks. Scully's background in faith and science–which, contrary to popular belief are not mutually exclusive–allows her to ask the right philosophical, ethical, and scientific questions when challenging Mulder's narratives.

While the answers aren't always satisfactory, Scully's attempts provide a healthy balance that we would all be better off emulating when deciphering news headlines and the political humbug of today. During the show's run, Carter employed a host of scientific advisors to make sure that The X-Files got Scully's know-how just right, and while some of it is certainly out-of-date, microbiologist Anne Simon wrote a book on her time on the series. When Fox brought Mulder and Scully back for the 2016 revival, Simon and fellow virologist Margaret Fearon even received story credit alongside Carter for "My Struggle II," which presented a surprise deadly viral outbreak of seemingly unknown origin.

If The X-Files needs Mulder to ask impossible questions, then it likewise needs Scully to attempt to answer them. We, too, must take the time to occasionally challenge our own biases and pre-scripted narratives, even when it becomes uncomfortable. Maybe especially then. On The X-Files, it's only when the believer and the skeptic can work in harmony that the villain's plot is foiled and lives are saved. Though that may prove impossible to duplicate on a national or international level, it can still be done in the everyday.

How Can an 'X-Files' Reboot Exist in Our Modern Times?

The X-Files’ (1)

Because of the mainstream nature of conspiracy theories, one might wonder if The X-Files is now a distinctly political work hoping to take a side — or, on the contrary, if it is an innocent look at a much simpler time when these theories were nothing more than harmless fun. If we're being honest, the series doesn't fit neatly into either category. Conspiracy theories and government secrets predate Mulder and Scully by hundreds of years. That's why the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution the way they did, full of checks and balances. Likewise, just because the show is arguably anti-authoritarian in nature doesn't mean that The X-Files hoped to incite action on either the left or the right sides of the aisle. It's still just a story.

Though maybe we wish they did, Mulder and Scully do not exist. The X-Files unit is not (to our knowledge) a branch of the FBI, and Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) is tragically not the Assistant Director. But that doesn't make the impact or importance of The X-Files any less. Whether you agree with the narratives depicted in the series or not, whether you're a believer or a skeptic, the long-running Fox series can be loved, cherished, and enjoyed by all without binding itself to a specific side. Like all great works of fiction, The X-Files has developed a life of its own outside the edges of our TV screens, and with plans to potentially reboot the series, one might wonder how a new generation might interpret the signs of the modern times.

No matter if it's the mytharc or the monster-of-the-week episodes that initially attracted you to The X-Files, you most likely stuck around for Mulder and Scully. Heck, that's why the series ultimately came to a close the first time in 2002 after David Duchovny left. Even though replacements John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish) did their best, their late introductions weren't enough to keep audiences around. Eventually, people tuned out and Fox called it quits, marking the first time The X-Files ended. (It would conclude again in 2018 after the second revival season, which suffered an even worse decrease in viewership.) Of course, the series has lived on for many of us, who continue to look to the skies for answers. After all, at the end of the day, we all want to believe.