I’m excited at today’s announcement that seminal 90’s paranormal investigation series The X-Files is returning to Fox for a limited series. But I’m nervous, too, because if any of the new episodes resurrect and validate a long-debunked rumour, I’ll have no choice but to end Werewolf News.
Seven years ago, I started Werewolf News with a post discussing the rumour that the then-in-production X-Files 2 movie would involve David Duchovny’s character Fox Mulder becoming a werewolf. This tantalizing possibility was supported by the circulation of a low-res photo of a partially wolfed-out Duchovny. “Unfortunately,” I wrote back then, “the veracity of these claims has been called into question with the maddening counter-rumour that we’re all purposely being faked out by the film’s creators.”
Indeed, we later learned that The X Files: I Want to Believe had nothing to do with werewolves, and I was bitter. Now, with Variety announcing that Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are officially set to reprise their roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, certain cosmic doors have been re-opened, and I may be forced to step through.
“I think of it as a 13-year commercial break,” Carter said. “The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories.”
The odds are vanishingly small that any of those stories will involve Fox Mulder becoming a werewolf. They’d be insane to squander any part of such a small order of episodes with an outlandish gimmick like that. But… but! Imagine that by some improbable fluke, it does happen. What then?
I’ll tell you “what then”. The ridiculous rumour that inspired me to start this web site almost exactly seven years ago today will have come true, even if it does happen in an episode instead of a film. The occurence of the highly improbable “Mulder Werewolf Scenario” would create a perfect pair of bookends around the nearly 1,000 posts on this site. The circle would be complete, and out of respect for such exquisite symmetry, I would have no choice but to end Werewolf News forever.
So, The X-Files is returning! Yay! But also, boo!(?)