Hey ‘X-Files’ Fans–You Need To Stick With Season 11

X-Files fans put up with a lot. Those who watched the series back when it debuted in 1993 had to put up with its lousy time slot and a lot of naysayers. After the show became an Emmy-winning hit, fans had to put up with an increasingly complicated mythology that expanded along with the audience. With the departure of David Duchovny at the end of Season 7, fans had to put up with a radical change to the show’s core chemistry. And then fans had to put up with a 14 year break before seeing FBI agents Mulder and Scully (Gillian Anderson) reunite for a new batch of cases in early 2016. Now two more years have passed and these sleuths of the supernatural are back for a new season, and once again, X-Files fans find themselves with more to put up with.

At this point, though, that’s not a bad thing. That’s actually to be expected and applauded; I’ve loved Mulder and Scully for 20 years, so I know that loving this show means being frustrated by this show. But that tension, the tug-of-war between what works and what doesn’t work, and the thrill when all of those insane elements conspire together to create a cult classic (like the truly baffling-yet-brilliant “Post-Modern Prometheus” from Season 5) are what makes The X-Files the X-Files. To love this show means to never know what’s coming next, and that’s exactly why Season 11 is pure X-Files.

The season’s premiere episode (“My Struggle III”) and the follow-up (“This”) are about as different as X-Files episodes come. Written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, “My Struggle III” is a very early contender for 2018’s Densest Hour Of TV. The entire episode plays at a breakneck pace as character after character dives deep into the show’s mythology–a mythology so convoluted that it feels like there are mythologies inside the mythologies. The episode is more an hourlong “Previously On…” catch-up segment than an actual story, which is sure to turn off the X-Philes that are more into the tension between Mulder and Scully than the tension between actors and monologues. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those longtime fans just peaced out after watching the nearly impenetrable premiere, especially if they’re led to believe the rest of Season 11 is gonna be like that.

Good news: it’s not.

The other four episodes made available to the press for review show that, just like in the show’s glory days, Season 11 is entertainingly all over the map. That’s evident from the cold open of January 10th’s “This,” which starts off with a scene that is exactly what a large chunk of fans watch this show for, the kind of thing that’s nowhere to be found in “My Struggle III.” “This,” the third episode (“Plus One”), and the fifth episode (“Ghouli”) are straight-up classic-style X-Files episodes, installments that would fit right in with the monster-of-the-week cases that dominate the show’s earliest seasons. “Plus One,” which was written by Carter, even proves that the show’s dad can knock out a chilling done-in-one that has all of the back-and-forth banter missing from his dense mythology escapades.

And then there’s “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” an episode from X-Files MVP Darin Morgan (the mind behind my all-time favorite episode “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”). To try to describe the episode is to do it a disservice, for it is so riveting in its peculiarity that it has to be seen to be believed that this kind of story could air on a major network. This one episode, which arrives on January 24, justifies The X-Files‘ resurgence in the modern era more so than any episode in Season 10 or any other I’ve seen in Season 11, and it makes a case for why we need this specific show (and Mulder and Scully) even though an anthology series like Black Mirror is doing sorta the same thing over on Netflix.

If don’t want a season of X-Files to frustrate you, then you’re asking the show to be something it fundamentally isn’t. From week to week during its initial 9-year run, the show stretched its ambitions thin by dissecting every type of sci-fi, horror, and (in some cases) comedy formula imaginable. That resulted in a show that bounced back and forth between brilliant and befuddling, with different fans responding to different episodes. The through line, though, was Mulder and Scully, characters worth revisiting week after week regardless of the episode’s token boogeyman. Just like the best seasons of this show, Season 11 will keep you off-balance about what kind of episode you’re going to get, but Anderson and Duchovny–still game for freaky fun after all these years–are there to guide you through the dark.

The X-Files returns for Season 11 on Wednesday, January 3 at 8 PM ET.

Where to stream The X-Files