Chris Carter Still Wants One More ‘X-Files’ Case for Mulder and Scully. Here’s What He Said, Where Coogler’s Hulu Reboot Stands and Everything We Know
Eight years after Fox Mulder and Dana Scully walked off a dock into a very uncertain future, the man who created them still won't let the story go. In a new interview with Page Six reported this week, Chris Carter said again that he would love to keep telling The X-Files story he set up in the revival seasons, either as a new series or another feature film. That would be a nice bit of fan service on any other week. This week it lands in a very crowded room, because Hulu has already ordered a brand-new X-Files series from Ryan Coogler, with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel leading it as two new agents who are explicitly not Mulder and Scully.
So which is it: a passing of the torch, or a franchise that ends up with two basements full of files? Below we lay out exactly what Carter has said across four months of interviews, what's confirmed about Coogler's show, how the last two revival seasons actually performed, where David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson stand, and what all of it means for the most influential paranormal series ever made.
Is there a trailer?
Not yet. Neither Hulu nor 20th Television has released footage, a teaser or even a first-look still from Coogler's series, and Carter's proposed continuation exists only as an idea he's pitched in conversation. We're not embedding fan-made "concept trailers" (there are plenty, and they're all fake). When Hulu drops official footage, we'll have it here.
What Carter actually said
This week's comments are the latest in a run of interviews Carter has given since August, most of them tied to the Hulu release of his director's cut of the 2008 film The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Put side by side, they tell a fairly consistent story, though some headlines have pushed it further than his words go.
- Page Six, November 2026 (via MovieWeb, Nov. 13): Carter said he would like to continue the story in series or film form, and that he deliberately planted a new storyline across the four "My Struggle" episodes that bookended the 2016 and 2018 revival seasons. He's also deep into an unrelated project, the satirical horror film Queens for a Day , written with his wife, Dori Pierson.
- TV Insider, August 2026: Carter described what he set up in those episodes as the biggest X-Files story he has ever conceived, and said he can't wait to tell it "if and when I get the chance." He acknowledged that the Season 11 finale left some fans outraged and others confused.
- Polygon, August 2026 (via MovieWeb): Carter said he had not seen Coogler's pilot and isn't directly involved in it, but believes Gillian Anderson, at least, will turn up in the new version and assumes David Duchovny will too. He said he'd love to do another reboot or another movie but didn't know which.
- The Daily Beast, August 2026: Carter said he's happy to hand over the reins and is parking his own Season 12-style plans until he sees where Coogler's show goes.
- Podcast appearance, reported by Bleeding Cool on Sept. 3: Carter said he had pitched his plan to Duchovny and Anderson separately, that any Season 12 would first need Fox's approval, and that he would not move without both stars: "I can't and don't want to do it without them."
The through-line is clear. Carter has a story, he has told his two stars about it, and he is not standing in Coogler's way. What he doesn't have is a studio order, a script announcement, or a public yes from Duchovny or Anderson. Headlines saying Carter is "ready to reunite" the original cast overstate it. He wants to. That's different.
Photo: Gillian Anderson via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), photographed by Ido Carmel at WonderCon 2008.
The details: Coogler's 'X-Files' is real, and it's moving
Here's what is confirmed about the series that actually has a green light. Hulu gave Ryan Coogler's reimagining a series order on Oct. 13, 2026, as reported by TVLine. Coogler wrote and directed the pilot. Jennifer Yale, whose credits include Outlander and Your Friends & Neighbors , is executive producer and showrunner. Coogler's statement on the order thanked his team at Proximity Media along with Onyx Collective and 20th Television.
The premise, per the official logline as reported by TVLine: two highly decorated FBI agents who couldn't be more different are assigned to a long-shuttered division that handles unexplained cases, and form an unlikely bond. The logline goes out of its way to say they are not Mulder and Scully. Danielle Deadwyler was cast first, in February 2026, and Himesh Patel was announced on March 27, per Euronews citing Variety. Both also serve as co-executive producers. Hulu has not announced an episode count or premiere window.
In his statement, Coogler said the goal was to honor what made the original show connect while finding the new team's own way into that world. That's a careful sentence, and it's the right one.
Photo: Himesh Patel via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped.
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Who's behind it
Ryan Coogler
Coogler arrives as the most bankable genre-adjacent filmmaker in Hollywood. His vampire period piece Sinners turned an original R-rated horror film into a box office smash and an awards-season heavyweight, and before that he steered Black Panther and the Creed franchise. In his series-order statement he said he has loved the show for a long time, and he's the rare filmmaker who can get a studio to say yes to a property with this much baggage.
Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel
Deadwyler broke out with Till and has since mixed prestige drama with genre, including the 2025 horror film The Woman in the Yard. Her TV résumé, per TVLine, includes Station Eleven , P-Valley , The Bear and Euphoria. Patel, best known for Yesterday , Tenet and HBO's The Franchise , has also done Black Mirror and is in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The two already have chemistry on the record: they co-starred in Station Eleven , one of the best-reviewed apocalypse dramas of the decade.
Chris Carter
Carter created The X-Files in 1993, ran it through nine original seasons, two feature films and two revivals, and also gave us Millennium , one of the bleakest network horror shows ever aired. By his own account he's not hands-on with Coogler's version. His newest project, Queens for a Day , is described by Film Stories as a horror fable involving time travel; he revealed it in August on the X-Cast podcast and said it appeared to be finished.
The backstory: how we got here
- 1993-2002: The original run on Fox, nine seasons, plus the 1998 feature Fight the Future.
- 2008: I Want to Believe , a standalone monster-of-the-week movie, now back in a Carter-approved director's cut on Hulu as of August 2026.
- January 2016: Season 10, a six-episode event revival, opens with "My Struggle."
- January-March 2018: Season 11, ten episodes, ends with "My Struggle IV," a finale that rewrote the parentage of Mulder and Scully's son William and closed on Scully revealing a pregnancy. Anderson afterward said she was done playing Scully.
- 2024: Anderson softens, saying, per TVLine, "I'm not saying no" to appearing if Coogler's version happened.
- February-March 2026: Deadwyler and Patel cast.
- August-September 2026: Carter's interview tour for the director's cut; he talks Season 12 and says he pitched it to both stars.
- Oct. 13, 2026: Hulu orders Coogler's series.
- November 2026: Carter, to Page Six, repeats that he'd like to finish his own story.
Photo: Chris Carter via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), at the July 2008 London premiere of I Want to Believe.
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By the numbers: the revival's rise and fall
If you want to understand why Fox hasn't jumped at Carter's Season 12, look at the ratings curve. According to the Nielsen figures collected on the show's Wikipedia page, the Season 10 premiere drew 16.19 million viewers in January 2016, helped by a post-NFL launch, and the season averaged about 13.6 million . Two years later, the Season 11 premiere opened to 5.15 million , the lowest premiere in the show's history, and the season averaged about 5.34 million . "My Struggle IV" closed things out with roughly 3.43 million , the lowest-rated finale the series ever had.
Context matters: 2018 was the year linear ratings were falling off a cliff for nearly every broadcast drama, and those numbers don't count delayed viewing or streaming. Still, the story the data tells is that curiosity carried the 2016 event, and the mythology episodes lost a lot of that audience by 2018. The mythology is exactly the part Carter wants to continue.
Analysis: what this really means
Strip out the nostalgia and there are three plausible futures here, and only one of them is likely soon.
The likely one: Coogler's show is the X-Files for the next few years. Disney owns the property through 20th Television and has put its money on a Coogler series with a showrunner, two leads and an order. Studios rarely run two versions of the same brand at once, especially when one is a reinvention designed to bring in a younger audience. Carter, to his credit, has said as much himself by shelving his plans to see how Coogler's show does.
The sneaky one: Mulder and Scully show up in Coogler's world. Carter keeps saying he expects Anderson to appear, and Bleeding Cool has described the new series as leaving a side door open for the original stars. This is the template that worked elsewhere: Halloween (2018) brought back Jamie Lee Curtis to hand off a franchise and made roughly $255 million worldwide, and Scream (2022) used Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette as a bridge to a new cast. A cameo or a recurring guest arc would give fans closure without re-litigating "My Struggle IV."
The long shot: Carter's own Season 12 or a third movie. It would need Fox or Disney's approval, both stars saying yes, and a business case built on a season that ended at 3.43 million viewers. The most realistic path is the one Carter keeps leaving open: if Coogler's show is a hit, appetite for the original duo goes up, not down. Revival fatigue is real, though. Twin Peaks: The Return was a creative triumph and a ratings shrug; Dexter: New Blood worked well enough to spawn a whole new franchise branch. Sequels to beloved TV live or die on whether they feel necessary.
The bigger takeaway is for horror TV in general. The X-Files invented the modern monster-of-the-week-plus-mythology format that shows like Supernatural , Fringe and Stranger Things built on. Putting an Oscar-winning filmmaker behind a new version tells you streamers see paranormal procedural as a prestige format again, not a cheap one. If Coogler and Yale can make the weekly case scary and the mythology coherent, they'll fix the thing the revival seasons couldn't.
What we still don't know
- When Coogler's series premieres, and how many episodes Hulu ordered.
- The names of Deadwyler's and Patel's characters, and the rest of the regular cast.
- Whether Anderson or Duchovny appear, even briefly. Carter thinks so; neither star has confirmed it.
- Whether Carter has any formal credit on the new show.
- Whether Fox or Disney would ever greenlight the story Carter set up in "My Struggle III" and "IV," and what that story actually is.
- When Queens for a Day , Carter's new horror film, gets a release date.
Bottom line
Chris Carter wants one more case with Mulder and Scully, he's told them so, and he's been saying it publicly for four months. But the X-Files that's actually happening belongs to Ryan Coogler, Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel, and Carter has chosen to get out of its way. The best-case outcome for fans may be the simplest: a great new show that earns the name, with a door left open for two old friends to walk through one more time.
Your turn: do you want Carter's Season 12, or should Mulder and Scully stay retired and let Coogler's agents take the files? Tell us in the comments.
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Header photo: Chris Carter by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added. Body photos via Wikimedia Commons as credited above.
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