Longtime ‘X-Files’ fans are in for a real treat when this week’s episode ‘Babylon’ airs. The episode, written and directed by Chris Carter, features the return of fan favorites the Lone Gunmen, the trio of paranoid conspiracy theorists that served as allies for Mulder in the original series. Well, until they died, anyway.
In 2001, FOX took a chance on these popular supporting players and gave them their own show, which crashed and burned quickly. The next year, they returned to ‘The X-Files’ in an episode entitled ‘Jump The Shark’, in which they were killed off.
How do they return? Carter himself said:
“When you’re dead on The X-Files, you’re never necessarily gone. There are ways to bring people back in dream sequences, flashbacks, and the like. This was an opportunity to use them, and bring them back to the show, in what is a presumed psychedelic hallucination.”
Carter also discussed the decision to kill them off in the first place:
“We just did what the network did [to] their show: Pull the plug! I was sad to see them go. They were go-to characters when you needed weird exposition. I didn’t want to pretend that they weren’t dead, but I was looking for any way to bring them back.”
And sadly, it sounds as if Byers (Bruce Harwood), Frohike (Tom Braidwood), and Langly (Dean Haglund) aren’t back in the flesh, but are simply hallucinations. In the image above, in their bizarre western attire, it certainly looks as if they are part of a surreal dream sequence.
The Lone Gunmen were revealed to be alive and to have faked their deaths in ‘Jump The Shark’ in an ‘X-Files’ comic book, but Carter seems to brush that off as not being canon.
The Lone Gunmen do not appear in the following clip from ‘Babylon’, but we do get our first look at Robbie Amell as paranormal-obsessed Special Agent Miller and Lauren Ambrose as Special Agent Einstein, a medical doctor who is partnered with Miller despite her skepticism of his conspiracy theories.
Watch Miller and Einstein as they meet Mulder and Scully:
When an art gallery that’s showing potentially offensive artwork is bombed, Mulder and Scully seek some way to communicate with the comatose bomber in order to prevent a future attack. Meanwhile, a pair of younger FBI agents on the case push Mulder and Scully to examine their own beliefs as Scully seeks answers from neuroscience and Mulder from mysticism.
‘The X-Files’ special event series has delivered huge ratings for FOX so it’s expected that some iteration of the show will return in a more permanent capacity, possibly as early as next year. There has been talk that should David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson not wish to return to a full series, that it’s possible that Amell and Ambrose could replace them. That probably depends on how fans react to them in this episode.
What do you think? Are you excited that the Lone Gunmen are returning in some capacity? What do you think of these new younger agents?
Source: Screen Rant
