The X-Files season 11 review roundup: Spoiler-free look at what the critics are saying
The new batch of episodes will serve as Gillian Anderson's series swansong
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Your support makes all the difference.The X-Files fans may have been waiting for the return of Mulder and Scully a considerable amount of time less than they had this time in 2016, but season 11 has arrived on a wave of anticipation regardless.
Chris Carter's series returns for another run following last year's miniseries which reunited FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully for six episodes that won over critics and fans as it went along.
The reviews have begun to flood in for the ten-episode 11th season which will serve as the swansong for Scully actor Gillian Anderson, and the good news is it's consistent praise all around.
Critics received the first five episodes, with the majority highlighting fourth outing - 'The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat' - as an early highlight.
'Forehead Sweat' guest-stars Brian Huskey (“People of Earth”) as either a madman or a fellow FBI agent from an alternate dimension who is intimately familiar with the show’s heroes, the alien-chasing feds Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). Mr. Morgan uses this premise to provide the ultimate in fan service — constructing an elaborate meta-story that recapitulates the history of the series, with a cracked version of The Twilight Zone as a framing device, and wallows in specific references to past X-Files instalments (including 'Clyde Bruckman’s').
Still, anybody hoping for more consistency from The X-Files in this latest resurrection should probably get used to this being what the series is. Since the show is Carter's baby and he isn't going anywhere or loosening up on the reins, you either find the bursts of inspiration and spookiness worth the plodding stretches of perfunctory mythology or you don't.
What’s striking about watching The X-Files in 2018 is just how rejuvenated it feels. While it’s never going to hit the heights of the third or fourth season from the original series (which aired from 1993 to 2002), the 2018 iteration is a damn sight better than the 2016 one, which boasted some solid instalments but also felt like a show in danger of chasing its own tail so rapidly that it might burrow straight down into the Earth.
The X-Files is shockingly relevant again and tackling current affairs better than it did in its original run and has a lot of fun doing it. That’s a real feat… or is it?
It’s not peak, season three X-Files, because too much time has passed, too many stories have been told, and the world is too different from the one in which Mulder and Scully first partnered. But, the mythology episode aside, it’s much better than it has any business being, particularly given what we got two years ago.
The X-Files airs in the US on 3 January with a UK release date yet to be announced.
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