Coogler’s X-Files Reboot Goes to Series, Its Pilot Anchored by Native Talent

Ryan Coogler’s take on The X-Files is officially a series. Hulu announced the order on Tuesday, October 13.

Danielle Deadwyler (Till) and Himesh Patel (Station Eleven) lead the cast as a pair of FBI agents with little in common beyond their résumés. They get stuck together in a division that’s been shut down for years, the one that handles the cases nobody can explain. Just don’t expect Mulder and Scully with new faces. Both actors are playing original characters.

Coogler wrote and directed the pilot and stays on as an executive producer, with Jennifer Yale running the show day to day. Chris Carter, who created the original and let slip in 2023 that Coogler was working on a reboot, is producing but not writing. Ludwig Göransson, who has scored nearly every Coogler project since Fruitvale Station, did the music. In a statement, Coogler said making the pilot “has meant a great deal to me.”

Onyx Collective and 20th Television are producing with Coogler’s company, Proximity Media. There’s no premiere date yet, and Hulu hasn’t said how many episodes are coming.

The Native cast

Back in May, the pilot added eight guest stars. Amy Madigan, Steve Buscemi, and Ben Foster got most of the headlines, but three of the eight are Indigenous actors with serious credits.

Tantoo Cardinal (Métis/Cree) has been at it for about 50 years, in everything from Dances With Wolves and Legends of the Fall to Wind River, Killers of the Flower Moon and Marvel’s Echo. Devery Jacobs (Mohawk) spent three seasons as Elora Danan on Reservation Dogs and has also piled up writing and producing credits. Joel D. Montgrand (Cree) played Eddie Qavvik on True Detective: Night Country and turned up in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Lochlyn Munro and Sofia Grace Clifton round out the guest cast.

Nobody’s saying who they play. What has come out about the pilot, which filmed in Vancouver this spring, is that it involves a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer and a missing woman. That’s a strong hint the show may take on the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

The X-Files history with Native stories

Native fans have a complicated relationship with The X-Files. The original series made bold choices that progressed Native representation. It cast Native actors in Native roles, featured the first Native language to be spoken on network TV without subtitles, and put Native knowledge at the core of its mythology. However, it also leaned into the stereotypical portrayals of Native spirituality, pulled folklore away from the communities it belongs to, and mostly kept Native characters on the sidelines of the agents’ investigations.

Coogler’s reboot has an opening the original never fully took. Cardinal, Jacobs and Montgrand have all done some of their best work in Native-led stories, and putting the three of them in the pilot suggests their characters were written to matter. Whether the rest of the series follows through depends on who Hulu hires to write the full season, and whether any of those writers are Native.