While most of the world was busy biding their time through two quarters of football to get to the big Star Wars trailer, there was some other stuff happening on TV last night. There was even another teaser for the upcoming X-Files revival. But it aired during Gotham, which means only Star Wars conscientious objectors (and maybe the North Koreans) actually saw it live. Fortunately, Fox also tweeted it out for the rest of us.
Most of the footage was already shown in previous teasers, but there’s a new wrinkle, which was hinted at in the recent poster of the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mulder uses his “phone a friend” lifeline to ask, “What if our work, the X-Files, everything we’ve been led to believe in, is a lie?” The smart money is on Scully being on the other end of the line. Then we cut to Assistant Director Skinner doing what Skinner does best, instructing, “Then do something about it.” That curveball is the cue for a closing-montage of flashlights, jetgun injectors, sidearms, and mysterious doorways—the live-action emoji version of spelling out “The X-Files.”
The teaser ends with a jumpy, destructive edit of the title card, helpfully reminding us that while The X-Files’ most famous slogan is “I WANT TO BELIEVE,” the second-place motto, “TRUST NO ONE,” may be more apt here. The X-Files returns to toy with its own mythology in January.