X-Files: The Lone Gunmen Rise Again!

They’re back from the dead! Or they were never dead! Or they were just at a really long Grateful Dead jam show—and now they’re back! Word through the grapevine is that The Lone Gunmen will appear in The X-Files revival that’s slated to start January 24th, 2016—apparently premiering after the NFC Championship Game—on FOX.

yep, it’s true. https://t.co/w718E0y6i8

— DEAN HAGLUND (@dhaglund) July 22, 2015

They’re joining creator Chris Carter’s roster of other verified returns; David Duchovny as Fox Mulder, Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner and William B. Davis as the Cigarette Smoking Man.

The original Lone Gunmen—Dean Haglund, Bruce Harwood, and Tom Braidwood—will be back to reprise their roles much to the unbridled glee of “X-Philes” everywhere. The characters are proving to be quite hard to kill, surviving the dangers on The X-Files, surviving the season one cancellation of their own self-titled spin-off and now returning after apparently having been killed! Details on their return are slim—is it flashback(s)?—was their demise staged?—but I have my theories that could tie-in with yesterday’s news of Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under, Dig ) and Robbie Amell (The Tomorrow People, The Flash) joining the cast as Agents “Einstein and Miller.” I put those character names in quotes because I have some thoughts—and because their character descriptions are pretty vague and interchangeable; “sharp and confident” and “smart and smooth”. These thoughts of mine hinge on this visual characteristics comparison:

I mean, come on! You’re seeing this too, right? They’re almost clones of Duchovny and Anderson! Now, here are my theories—

Theory One: These are not the same Lone Gunman! They’ve come here from a parallel dimension! And they somehow brought Young Parallel Scully (Ambrose) and Mulder (Amell) with them! Come on—you know you were thinkin’ this too.

Theory Two: The Lone Gunmen that died were copies made by aliens! The real Lone Gunman are back from space! And once again, they’ve somehow brought Young Space Scully and Mulder—who were being grown from samples of Dana’s and Fox’s DNAs!

Theory Three: The Lone Gunmen appear in flashbacks where they set up—through flashbacks within the flashbacks—the groundwork for the spin-off X-Files: The Quantico Years featuring the Young Impressionable and Ambitious Scully and Mulder. The angsty spitfire show would feature a lot of love triangles (often with aliens and monsters) and serve to reboot the entire series for the YA crowd with special guest turns from members of One Direction (who in a nod to the wordplay of “The Lone Gunmen” will be referred to as “One Directions”.

You know one of these is what’s really going on—admit it!—and it’s probably theory three. . . Unless!—The Lone Gunmen were thrown into the future! They’ve returned with Scully’s and Mulder’s eventual offspring in an effort to save the us all from Skynet! I could go on and on—the point being that something is absolutely going on and FOX is trying to hide it from us. It’s a conspiracy! Look at the evidence! Thank our lucky stars that The Lone Gunmen are back to get to the bottom of all of this. What do you think? The truth is out there!—in January.