7 (Good) Things We Learned About The Upcoming X-Files Episodes

You know when you get together with an old friend who you haven’t seen in forever, and the first hour is kind of weird as you try to reconnect? That’s exactly what the premiere of The X-Files was like for me. Super awkward and uncomfortable. The acting was stilted. The dialogue convoluted. The whole thing was like a bizarro The X-Files.

But, good news! The show gets better. Tonight’s episode (airing at 8 p.m. on FOX) is a good one, and by next week the drama is back to the The X-Files we know and love.

So what else do you need to know about the five remaining episodes? Paste recently participated in a conference call with executive producer and creator Chris Carter to find out.

Warning: some spoiler-ish information below.

1. William is not forgotten.

The son Mulder and Scully were forced to give up will play an important part in the show’s return, particularly in episodes two and four. “Even though he’s not in the show per se, he’s an absent presence,” Carter said. “He is important to the arc of the stories moving forward.”

2. Mulder and Scully are apart for a reason.

“It was our thinking that Mulder and Scully would have had a very hard time living under the same roof, based on their personalities and their passions,” Carter explained. “I see Mulder, probably because he’s got Google and the Internet and search engines, and he probably spent a lot of time at home sitting in his underwear. I didn’t imagine that would sit well with Scully. I believe it would spell a bump in the road for them, which is why you find them not together. “

3. But all is not lost.

Where will one of TV’s most iconic couples end up? “I think you’ll see through the course of the six episodes that they begin to be drawn closer together, not just through their investigations, but through what I would call a deep love for one another,” Carter explains.

4. Despite being dead, The Lone Gunmen will be back.

Carter wouldn’t say just how the fan favorite trio would return, but promised the following: “I can tell you that they come back in a way that you would absolutely never expect. If I gave you 100 guesses right now, you’d never get it.”

5. 2016 is the perfect political climate to re-open The X-Files.

“We live in an era of a tremendous amount of suspicious and distrust,” Carter said. “When we went off the air in 2002, there couldn’t have been more trust in government and institutions. And we allowed a lot of our rights and liberties to be abridged in the name of security. I think that we’ve all witnessed now the abuse of that trust and The X-Files wants to point a very bright light at some of those dark corners that have developed.”

6. There will be Easter eggs.

“When you do a show that has been off the air for 14 years, you do unintended Easter eggs,” Carter said. “There are specifics ones, and then there are the unintentional ones because the show has to be self-referential to tell these stories.”

7. More episodes are a possibility.

Carter said everyone had a great time putting the show together again. Now it’s up to the fans. “It’s waiting to see if we build it, will the audience come,” he explained. “It seems as if there’s a viewership out there. Everyone has got to get the word out there in order to get the ratings that will promote more episodes.”