Source: EW | Posted By: Dan Geer
For fans of The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen were absolute fan favorites. Everyone loved them. They were funny, geeky, smart, paranoid, and always able to get Mulder and Scully out of a pickle. They debuted in the latter half of Season One, and were with the show until the very end. They even had a short-lived spinoff series of their own for a season, but it was unfortunately canceled. Soon after, in the final season of The X-Files, there story came to a close… or so we thought!
EW is reporting that actor Dean Haglund, “Langly” of The Lone Gunmen, has revealed via Twitter than they are indeed returning for the new series next year. Read on to find out more on the return of The Lone Gunmen in The X-Files revival series!
Spoilers ahead (although if you haven’t seen the entire X-Files series by now, shame on you)…
So, by the end of the final season of The X-Files, the writers decided The Lone Gunmen should go out with a bang, and they killed them off. Rightly so, the story had them die as heroes, saving the lives of countless people from a deadly virus. It wasn’t a popular decision, but they went ahead with it anyway. So the question is, “HOW IN THE WORLD CAN THEY POSSIBLY RETURN?!!!! THEY’RE DEAD!!”
This question has been nagging at my mind in the last few hours since EW published the news. Granted, the “Season 10” comic series of The X-Files brought them back, basically stating they never actually died, and actually faked their own deaths to hide from their enemies, and that the Federal Government actually helped them out in exchange for their services “troubleshooting the government’s technological vulnerabilities.” Langly apparently even helped with the “Stuxnet” virius back in 2010 according to the Season 10 comics.
It’d be pretty cool if this is what happens in The X-Files revival series next January. However, the problem with this is that not only can I not recall them making any real enemies during either The X-Files or The Lone Gunmen series, but they appeared to Mulder as GHOSTS in the series finale of The X-Files after they had already died earlier that season. The plot of that episode saw Mulder being visited by old friends and enemies that had already passed on, helping Mulder all throughout, including The Lone Gunmen. They literally appear out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere when Mulder stops to take a leak on the side of the road!
It begs the question: If The Lone Gunmen actually faked their deaths, then how is this scene even possible? Was Mulder just imagining all these “ghosts,” and it was really just Mulder helping himself the whole time through his own delusional visions of dead people? Well, that doesn’t quite work either does it? First off, Mulder showed no signs of being delusional in the first place to indicate that these people were from his own imagination. What’s more, Mr. X (one of the already dead characters) hands Mulder a piece of paper with something written on it to help him out. Mulder didn’t have a pen and paper in his prison cell where Mr. X visited him. Any belongings he might have had would have been confiscated from him before he changed into his prison clothing, and I’m sure the prison interrogator that beat Mulder more than a dozen times would’ve made sure he had nothing on him.
I didn’t mind The Lone Gunmen coming back in the Season 10 comic. It’s a comic book, and not exactly canon. Yes, X-Files creator Chris Carter served as executive producer on the comic series, but the comics aren’t really Carter’s stories, and we all know that the new TV series will not be straight adaptations of the comic books (although they could pull ideas from it). When strictly applying the comic’s explanation of The Lone Gunmen returning to what we saw in the TV series, it doesn’t quite work, and we all know that Chris Carter and the writers for The X-Files TV series and movies have always stayed true to what has come before, and they have stated that it will be no different with the revival series next January.
So since they were exposed to and isolated with the virus when it was released, and they appeared to Mulder as ghosts, then the writers really need to come up with something unique and amazing that explains how they could ever possibly be alive still. And this isn’t like Cancer Man’s return in the new series. Even though he also clearly died at the end of Season 9, die-hard fans of the series won’t have any difficultly speculating how he could return, given what we already know of the mythology (the Season 10 comic does have a reasonable explanation for this). But I really have no real idea how The Lone Gunmen can come back. As much as I want to see them again, and as much as I believe it was a mistake to kill them off, the writers need to stay true to what happened in Season 9. Don’t bring them back just because the fans love them. Make sure there is a VERY good explanation to go along with it.
Please, if anyone can offer me reasonable speculation as to how they can return, leave your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to read them!
For more on The X-Files revival series, check out PopcornMonster.com’s Beginner’s Guide to The X-Files!
