Ed Araquel/FOXHow do you herald the return of a beloved series more than 13 years after it went off the air? If you’re The X-Files, you do so by blowing things up, both literally—like an alien spacecraft—and figuratively—like Mulder and Scully’s relationship.
Fox debuted the hotly anticipated return of The X-Files to a packed crowd at New York Comic Con. Series stars David Duchovny and Mitch Pileggi, creator Chris Carter and fan turned guest star Kumail Nanjiani were on hand to celebrate the TV event.
So what happened? You’ll have to wait and see in January—but this we can tease:
Mulder and Scully are no longer living together: They aren't together. Get all your booing and hissing out of the way. This can actually be exciting (as we've shared before).
“We wanted to be true to the passage of time,” Carter told the audience after the episode aired. “Mulder and Scully have had their difficulties."
When pressed by a fan, Carter described seeing a message while working on a show. He was going under a bridge and written above them was “Life has many bumps in the road,” he said. "Mulder and Scully have hit one of those.”
Carter told E! after the panel that the fan reaction to their breakup surprised him. “It did,” he said. “I wondered how many people were actually reacting—if it was a vocal minority or there were a lot of people reacting. As I mentioned, there are bumps in the road here…”
But Nanjiani, who moderated the panel and hosts a podcast about The X-Files, appropriately titled The X-Files Files, said he enjoys the change in their status.
“I like it because i think it makes sense and it shows the characters have been living their lives and growing while we haven’t been watching them. I think it gives them some place to go,” he told E!. “It’s much more interesting that they're in this position and it’s a position that makes sense to me. If they’re happy and they have kids in the suburban home—there’s no drama. I truly think you don’t really want to see Mulder and Scully together. You think you do, but I don’t think you do. I think you like the tension.
There will be standalone episodes: Carter confirmed the first episode of the six and the last are heavy with the mythology aspect of the show and the middle four are standalone stores. So if you’ve never been super into The X-Files, you don’t have to worry. In fact, the opening scene is a recap of sorts, highlighting the gist of the show and the characters at its heart. The mythology at its core—the alien colonists and government involvement has been flipped on its head with Mulder pursuing a new path, you’ll see. But for Duchovny, that didn’t change how he played the character.
“No, the beliefs don’t influence the portrayal of it. It was more just where we’re starting emotionally for the show. he’s a little down, but you can’t really continue that and lead the show. Scully was always the downer, the one who had the brakes. She put the brakes on Mulder, but Mulder comes out of the gate hitting the brakes, so where does the show go? We had to get back there,” Duchovny told us.
Things started off with a bang: You won't be laughing about these X-Files special effects (unlike some of the show's earlier episodes).
"David, before the episodes, we spoke, and he said, 'I think we have to come out and punch them in the mouth,'" Carter said on the panel. "We knew we need to make a statement, we needed to be bold, and we need to show we're back."
And everybody—at least in the convention hall—seemed to be on board. It was the first time Pileggi and Duchovny had seen the episode. They watched it along with thousands of others. So how was the reaction?
“You can tell if they’re—there’s just a sense of whether they’re with it or not, whether they’re bored…but I felt like yes there was this sense that they wanted to cheer at the winky moments, but beyond that I felt like they were like…they were entertained by the show and not the fact that there were pencils in the ceiling or the fact that we’re using smartphones," Duchovny shared. "None of that stuff—that’s fun but not part of my job. The job that we did that actors do they hope to involve the people and I felt—I could be diluting myself, but i felt like they were involved.”
The X-Files returns on Sunday, Jan. 24 on Fox. Keep coming back to E! Online for more about The X-Files.