Ryan Coogler's X-Files reboot gets a Hulu series order with two new agents in an old office

Hulu has ordered Ryan Coogler's The X-Files reboot to series. Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel star as two highly decorated but very different FBI agents who form an unlikely bond after they are assigned to a long-shuttered division for cases involving unexplained phenomena.

The premise sounds like a fresh start. It is also, almost exactly, something The X-Files has already done once, in its final original seasons, when the show put two new agents in the X-Files office in place of Mulder and Scully.

The X-Files has replaced its agents before

In the original run's eighth and ninth seasons, Gillian Anderson took the lead while David Duchovny appeared only intermittently. The show introduced FBI Special Agents John Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), and by the later part of season eight, Reyes had taken Scully's place in the X-Files office. Those were the show's last two seasons in its original run.

Coogler's version is a reimagining, not a continuation, so the new agents do not have to live up to predecessors on screen. But the idea of two new partners reopening the X-Files is not new to this franchise. It is the version it tried at the end.

The record Deadline compresses

Deadline sums up the history this way: the series premiered on Fox in 1993 and ran for nine seasons, spawned two films, and was followed by "a 2016 revival that aired on Fox for two seasons". The fuller version, per Wikipedia:

• Original run: September 10, 1993, to May 19, 2002, nine seasons, 202 episodes.
• Films: The X-Files (1998) and The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008).
• Season 10: six episodes, January to February 2016.
• Season 11: ten episodes, January to March 2018, ordered after the ratings success of the revival.
• Total: 11 seasons, 218 episodes.

So the "2016 revival" was two separate short seasons two years apart, 16 episodes in all. The second came because the first did well.

How the reboot got here

The order caps a journey of more than three years. Chris Carter first said in a 2023 podcast interview that Coogler was "going to remount The X Files with a diverse cast", adding that Coogler had his work cut out for him because the original "covered so much territory".

• Studios: Onyx Collective and 20th Television, both under Disney, which owns Hulu.
• Pilot: written, directed and executive produced by Coogler through Proximity Media.
• Showrunner: Jennifer Yale, who executive produces with Coogler.
• Other executive producers: Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian of Proximity, and series creator Chris Carter.
• Co-executive producers: Simone Harris of Proximity, plus Deadwyler and Patel.
• Music: Proximity co-founder Ludwig Göransson scored the pilot.

The project comes from Coogler's five-year exclusive television deal with Disney. In June he signed an overall deal with Netflix, but he will keep working on The X-Files.

Coogler said in a statement that he had loved the show for a long time, that what Carter created is special, and that the team wanted to honour what made the original connect with so many people while finding its own way into that world.

The new pair

Patel is an Emmy nominee known for The Odyssey and Station Eleven. Deadwyler's credits include The Bell Jar and The Chaperones. Deadline does not name their characters, and the announcement does not mention Mulder or Scully.

That makes the comparison with the originals unavoidable anyway. Gillian Anderson won a Screen Actors Guild Award in 1996 and 1997, an Emmy in 1997 and a Golden Globe in 1997 for playing Scully. The X-Files office comes with that history, whoever sits in it.

Built on two casting decisions

The original's leads were not an accident. Carter insisted on Anderson for Scully, saying she had the kind of "no-nonsense integrity that the role required", according to Wikipedia. Mitch Pileggi, who played Assistant Director Walter Skinner, had unsuccessfully auditioned for two or three other roles on the show before landing that one. The show's production later returned to Vancouver for I Want to Believe and both revival seasons.

Coogler's version will be judged first on the same thing: whether Deadwyler and Patel can make a two-person partnership carry a show about things nobody else believes.

What is still unknown

• A premiere date and the number of episodes.
• Whether Anderson or Duchovny appear in any form. The announcement does not mention them.
• The rest of the cast. Coogler refers to "the rest of our cast", but only the two leads have been named.
• How Coogler's Netflix deal affects his involvement beyond the pilot.

The X-Files ended its original run with two new agents in the X-Files office. Twenty-four years later, its reboot starts the same way.