The most memorable episodes of The X-Files to revisit before Ryan Coogler’s reboot

If you don’t love Gillian Anderson, please grab your shoes and show yourself the door.

She is a queen who not only played an iconic character in Dana Scully, but has carved out a brilliant career since The X-Files wrapped up in 2002. How many people can say they played Scully plus Margaret Thatcher, Stella Gibson and Eleanor Roosevelt?

But we don’t know if that means we want to see Anderson don a trench coat and return to the ranks of the FBI.

Anderson has left the door open to joining filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s planned The X-Files project. This week, she told UK’s ITV, “I spoke to (Coogler) and what I said was, ‘If anyone were to do it, I think you are the perfect person, and best of luck. Call me’”.

It’s not clear if Coogler’s take on The X-Files is a reboot or a sequel or something adjacent in the same universe. When Coogler took on Creed, he built a story that kept it in the same continuity as Rocky while giving it a fresh spin. He could take a similar approach with The X-Files, or he could start from scratch.

Coogler, who has been promoting his latest film, Sinners, told The Last Podcast on the Left that he was excited to pick the project back up.

He said, “Some of those episodes, if we do our jobs right, will be really fucking scary. We’re gonna try to make something really great, bro, and really be something for the real X-Files fans, and maybe find some new ones.”

The filmmaker had been attached to an X-Files project for at least two years. It was the series original creator, Chris Carter, who broke the news in 2023 when he said, “I just spoke to a young man, Ryan Coogler, who is going to remount The X-Files with a diverse cast”.

Obviously, if Coogler and Anderson want to revive Scully, no fan is going to object too loudly but after being burnt with the confusing and limp 2016 two-season revival, some things are better left alone.

Those 20 episodes, under the tutelage of Carter, brought home the truth that The X-Files, in its original iteration, was done. It retconned some aspects of the original series (no way does Cigarette Smoking Man survive that rocket-launcher inferno from 2002, we literally saw his flesh blown away from his skull) and muddied up an already convoluted mythology.

The best part of the revival was the throwaway line that the aliens were no longer interested in colonising Earth thanks to global warming. That Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster episode was also excellent.

A blank slate is a much better idea, and one that’s not going to be burdened by the existing conspiracies of the 1994 series that have a different resonance in this era of supercharged internet paranoia.

The original X-Files had a plot line involving a government scheme that inventoried the human population through a genetic tag in the smallpox vaccine. With a vaccine denier in charge of health in the White House and immunisation rates falling (in Australia, it has declined every year since its peak in 2020), a new version of The X-Files will have to tackle this with more sensitivity.

Here’s hoping Coogler opts for a monster-of-the-week format with a couple of newbie investigators who may or may not believe the truth is out there. Some of those stories weren’t only genuinely spooky or absurd, they were often elegant metaphors for life’s many challenges.

As we’ve seen with Sinners, Coogler also knows how to have fun with supernatural beings.

While we wait with anticipation over a new era for The X-Files, let’s take a quick look back at some of the original series’ most memorable episodes.

SQUEEZE/TOOMS

Eugene Victor Tooms is one the freakiest monsters on The X-Files. He’s over 100 years old, loves to eat liver (but the human variety, gulp) and, oh yeah, he’s real stretchy, like Elastigirl stretchy. The sight of Tooms, whether he’s elongated or just starring at you with those bulgy, dead eyes is enough to make you physically ill.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN’S FINAL REPOSE

Starring Peter Boyle as the titular Clyde, this season three episode really came at the show’s high point and is often cited as the best ever chapter of The X-Files. A masterful blend of genres that’s funny, smart and deep, it’s written by Darin Morgan, a fan favourite scribe responsible for the show’s most absurd touches. Boyle plays a man who can foresee everyone’s eventual death.

MEMENTO MORI

You know how we said Gillian Anderson was a queen? Memento Mori is one the reasons why. A performance showcase for her talents, thus season four episode is one of the show’s mythology instalments and features a storyline involving Scully undergoing treatment for cancer. Struggling to confront her human vulnerability, she’s convinced the diagnosis is related to her earlier abduction. It also emphasises the depth of her and Mulder’s relationship.

EVE

The 1970s and 1980s had plenty of horror movies with creepy kids (Children of the Corn, The Omen) because there’s nothing quite as ominous as the corruption of youthful innocence. This season one episode came out in 1993 and the memories of those earlier films were very much still in the zeitgeist. Eve adds fuel to that nightmare with this story about child twins/clones who had committed murders at the opposite ends of the country.

ARCADIA

For some of us, suburbia is deeply terrifying, especially the planned community kind with the architecturally bereft McMansions and fakes smiles. The conformity and conservatism of the suburbs is scary even without a literal garbage monster roaming around. Mulder and Scully go undercover in Arcadia Falls and discover the overlord of the community has called on a Tulpa to enforce his petty rules. Watching the agents play house is pretty funny.

TRIANGLE

Huzzah! A Bermuda Triangle episode, and with a flashback/time travel/fever dream component. This season six instalment finds Mulder tracking down an ocean liner that has disappeared only to find himself onboard and back in time in September 1939 with Nazis looking for the mythical Thor’s Hammer. It’s a fun episode in which many of the cast play different characters and it’s shot in the long, continuous takes of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope.

The X-Files is streaming on Disney+ and Paramount+