Tag Archives: Alien

Nov 8 2025

Predator: Badlands Gives Us A New Hero To Root For

The Predator franchise has experienced an upswing in quality lately thanks to creator Dan Trachtenberg who directed the last two Predator films, Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers. Now, Trachtenberg has reached the creative peak with Predator: Badlands, the latest Predator film out in theaters. Not only is it a thrilling, action-packed and well paced, but unlike the previous films, this one stands apart for one very important reason.

What sets Predator: Badlands apart from the typical Predator film is that it is told from the point of view of the alien predator, the Yautja; in this film, that Predator is called Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who is the runt of his Yautja clan. The film opens up in the Predator’s homeworld and Dek wants to go on a warrior rite of passage to earn his place in his family clan. To do that he has to travel to a deadly planet called Genna and bring back a trophy kill of that planet’s apex predator, the Kalisk. However, Dek’s father, the leader of the family clan (also played by Schuster-Koloamatangi), considers Dek to be a runt that should be culled. IOW, killed off. Before this can happen, Dek’s older brother, Kwei (MIke Homik), sacrifices his life to protect his younger brother and sends him off to Genna.

After crash landing on the planet, Dek is immediately beset and hunted by the vicious creatures inhabiting the primordial world. Even the plant life if deadly to him as some plants shoot paralyzing needles, while carnivorous vines nearly devour Dek. Basically, the planet makes Pandora look like a leisure world. Along the way, he encounters a synth called Thia (Elle Fanning), a highly advanced and empathic synthetic woman who is part of a mission by the company Weyland-Yutani Corporation (the same infamous company from the Alien franchise) to capture an animal specimen for research. Thia is missing her lower half due to an attack by a Kalisk that separated her from her synthetic associates during an attempt to capture it, which included Tessa (also played by Fanning).

Thia offers to function as Dek’s informational tool to hunt the Kalisk in exchange for transporting her to the site of the attack so she could reattach her legs. Dek is reluctant at first, but Thia’s knowledge of the terrain and deadly fauna is valuable so the two form an unlikely partnership as they traverse the deadly jungle forests. What neither realize is that Tessa was recovered and sets out on her mission with a cold heart and drive to capture the Kalisk and she will not let anything get in her way, including Thia and the Yautja.

Predator: Badlands works so well not just because it is stuffed to the gills with action or because of its impressive production and special effect, but because it develops the Yautja. We actually understand their alien culture which is a bit more complex than expected. They are not mindless killers but hunters with a strict honor code. We saw this in previous films, but this one literally takes us to their world and we get into their mindset as we learn to sympathize with some of the Yautja, especially Dek.

This Predator is clearly the film’s main character and it is not long before we are rooting for him at every turn as it is clear that he is the film’s hero. Part of that sympathy is because he is considered a runt, given his smaller stature. But Dek has the heart of a warrior and a relentless drive to succeed that he can’t help but admire. Just because Dek is smaller than the average Yautja does not mean he cannot hold his own in a fight. Much like Marvel Comics’ Wolverine, Dek is a savage fighter who will use any tool to defeat his foes or kill his prey. Speaking of fighting, the fight scenes are quite intense and brutal. The film surely would have earned an R rating if not for the fact that we never see red blood on screen. In fact, there are not any humans at all in this film, which is remarkable and helps set the film apart from nearly all live-action films.

While the film takes every step to flesh out the Yautja, it also does this with the synthetic people. In the past Alien films we saw the synthetics as either coldly evil or warmly human-like, and Predator: Badlands continues this tradition. There are hints throughout that the synthetics, mostly through Thia, have begun to develop their own sense of self and independence, which could be worth exploring in a future film or TV show that focuses on the synthetics. It is also worth noting that the camaraderie between Dek and Thia feels organic and although we know how their relationship will progress it is still enjoyable to watch as they form their own sort of clan.

Director Dan Trachtenberg clearly not only has the drive to explore the Predator’s culture and flesh out the aliens, but the skills to pull this off. He has a great visual style and sense of storytelling that instantly engages us with his stories while adding so much to the Predator lore. At the same time, he adds more to the Alien franchise without going overboard with references. He ties both franchises very skillfully but you can enjoy this film without having seen a single frame from the Alien films. He has plans for a third film if Predator: Badlands is successful enough and he also hopes to bring back the star of the original Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, which would be awesome considering the hints of possibilities Trachtenberg teased us with in Predator: Killer of Killers.

Predator: Badlands is clearly one of the best films in the Predator franchise, perhaps as great as the original, though the two films had very different tones. Given the film’s rich world building and the way it ends, we have to see more of Dek and Thia and the rest of the worlds in Predator: Badlands.

José Soto

Sep 28 2025

Alien: Earth Crashes Down To Earth

Given that the Alien franchise has been around for nearly 50 years, it was surprising that until Alien: Earth, no TV show was made about the famous sci-fi horror IP. One would think that more effort would have gone into making the first Alien TV show much better than it turned out.

Alien: Earth was created by Noah Hawley (the writer and producer of Legion and Fargo) and takes place a couple of years before the first Alien film, around 2120. It expands upon the universe created in Alien by showcasing life on Earth and answering many questions about this universe while raising many more questions.

The TV show focuses on Wendy (Sydney Chandler), a prototype hybrid and her evolution. She and other hybrids (nicknamed the Lost Boys after Peter Pan) differ from the synthetic people shown in other Alien films in that originally they were dying children whose consciousness were transferred into synthetic human bodies, which makes them in essence immortal. Wendy and the Lost Boys were created by the corporation called Prodigy, which is based in Asia, and is owned by a douchey trillionaire tech bro called Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin).

Kavalier covets the extraterrestrial biological specimens collected in a spaceship owned by rival company Weyland-Yutani and he arranges for the spaceship to crash land in Prodigy territory on Earth so his corporation could claim the specimens as salvage. As it turns out, one of the dangerous organisms is the famous xenomorph that made the franchise so revered.

When the Weyland-Yutani spaceship crashed in the Prodigy city New Siam, one of the first responders to arrive at the scene was Wendy’s brother Joe Hermit (Alex Lawther), who is soon endangered by a xenomorph that is now loose in the crash site. After Wendy learns of this, she volunteers to go to the crash site to help collect the alien specimens with Prodigy soldiers and rescue her brother. Once Hermit is rescued and the aliens are captured, Kavalier has the alien creatures brought to his private Neverland Island, where Wendy and the Lost Boys are based, to study the creatures. Of course, as things go in Alien stories, things get out of hand as the xenomorph and other alien creatures break loose from captivity and imperil not just the people on the island but the entire planet. Meanwhile, Wendy and the other hybrids go through existential crises as they struggle to find meaning in their new lives as hybrids.

There are many great and promising elements in Alien: Earth, such as the fact that it feels like it is part of the franchise and captures the mood and atmosphere of the films. The special effects are truly outstanding, as well as the production design. More importantly, Alien: Earth truly fleshes out the universe it takes place in with new characters, explaining the overall makeup of the Alien universe, and by introducing new kinds of synthetics and aliens.

The TV show introduced unique and terrifying alien creatures that rival the xenomorphs for deadliness and reinforce how hostile space is to humanity. The most terrifying creature is something called the trypanohyncha ocellus, a tentacled eyeball that kills its victims and takes over their bodies by forcibly burrowing itself into the victims’ eye socket. What was more disturbing by this cyclopean horror was that it clearly displayed a high level of intelligence and helped created the chaos throughout the show.

As for the synthetic beings, the most interesting ones were Kirsh (Timothy Oliphant), a classic synthetic who is naturally distant and dismissive towards humans, and operates as one of Prodigy’s chief scientists and Wendy’s trainer. Another is Morrow (Babou Ceesay), who is actually a cyborg, meaning that he is technically human but with cybernetic implants. He was the only survivor from the crashed Weyland-Yutani spaceship and has a rather tragic backstory Morrow only exists to complete his mission of bringing the specimens to his company and he will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. The episode “In Space, No One…” was a flashback episode that showcased Morrow’s time onboard the spaceship before it crashed and gave us much of his backstory. Being that the episode was in essence a remake of Alien and emulated the look and feel of the classic film, it was easily the best episode of the season.

While all this sounds promising, the payoff was ultimately disappointing, which is regrettable since there is a lot to commend about Alien: Earth.

There are glaring problems with the show, namely with the scripts were characters behave stupidly and there are enough plot holes to drive the Nostromo through them. Here is just one example: the xenomorph is now bulletproof no matter how many times it’s shot. Many characters are poorly written with some being downright irritating. The worst offender is Kavalier, who is so annoying with his one-dimensional nature and dirty bare feet. There was this scientist who does not seem to notice that her husband had gone missing (he was killed by a facehugger in an episode) and never mentions him.

It seems as if Hawley is more interested in exploring the synthetic beings instead of focusing on the alien creatures, which is puzzling since the show is supposed to be about aliens and it left us with many questions about the xenomorphs and other aliens. The thing is that the exploration of artificial beings has been done better many times in other TV shows. There are too many Lost Boys who are thinly developed with heavy-handed references to Peter Pan and frankly their immature behavior got irritating after a while. Wendy’s motivations were all over the place. First she is confused about whether or not she is human, then she’s trying to discover who she is, then she is disdainful of humanity. Her arc was very inconsistent, then to make matters worst, the show turned her into some kind of God-level being by giving her the ability to control all electronics and then the xenomorphs themselves. For some reason, Wendy is able to communicate with the aliens (in many dumb looking scenes where she opens her mouth and chitters at the creatures) and turns the xenomorphs into her pets. This robs the xenomorph of its infamous savagery and deadly nature. During scenes where a xenomorph follows her commands it appears far less threatening than in the films and the way these scenes were shot in bright light did not help either.

Alien: Earth starts off with much promise and has genuine moments of creepiness and intensity, but it starts to lag in pace midway through its too short season. It created many situations that were not fully developed and the payoff by its final episode “The Real Monsters” was lacking as the show crashed back to Earth. What sucks even more is that many questions were unanswered and we will probably have to wait for at least two years before we get any answers, that is if Alien: Earth is renewed, but few will care by that point.

José Soto

Jan 5 2025

Top Ten Most Anticipated Films & TV Shows

Aside from the fact that the year 2025 means that this century is now 25 percent complete, this year promises many great genre films and TV shows for our enjoyment. Here is the list of the most anticipated films and TV shows for 2025. But note that as always, some of the projects listed will either be delayed to another year or turn out to be hot garbage and/or won’t necessarily be among the best films or TV shows when the year is complete. With that, let’s check out what 2025 has in store for us.

Films

10. Predator: Badlands

The film Prey turned out to be a great surprise as it jumpstarted the Predator franchise. The director of Prey, Daniel Tracthenberg, returns with a fresh new premise as the new film is told from the point of view of the Predator.

9. Jurassic World: Rebirth

The Jurassic Park/World franchise starts off with a new premise and cast as dinosaurs have become an endangered species. Calamity ensues (as always) when humans try to gather genetic material from the last remaining dinosaurs on an island.

8. Sinners

Black Panther Director Ryan Coogler teams up again with actor Michael B. Jordan in a horror yarn featuring vampires. Jordan plays a dual role as troubled twin brothers who return to their hometown only to discover a deadly evil waiting for them.

7. How to Train Your Dragon

While the idea of adapting beloved animated classics into live-action films has run its course, looking at you Disney, the trailer for this film looks great. It captured the look and tone of the original film from DreamWorks Animation, so let’s hope the film will turn out to be as great as the animated classic.

6. Captain America: Brave New World

The first film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) for 2025 would have been more anticipated if not for the unsettling and continuous reports about constant reshoots and poor reactions from screenings. The trailers look great, especially with Harrison Ford playing the Red Hulk and Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson fully embracing the legacy role of Captain America. In any event, we’ll see in a few weeks.

5. Thunderbolts*

At first, this loose adaptation of the Marvel Comics anti-superhero team seemed like a poor MCU knockoff of the Suicide Squad. What gave this impression was the lineup of the team of supervillains forced into servitude by the U.S. government. Unlike the comic books, the team is made up of the MCU’s lesser-powered characters. But the interplay among them as seen in the trailers was amusing and could be the highlight of the film.

4. 28 Years Later

The creative people behind the first film, 28 Days Later, return for the third film in the British “zombie” apocalypse film franchise which is set…28 years after the first film. Being that the original director, Danny Boyle, is back, this film should be as tense and horrifying as the original classic. There are many questions about what has happened to the world after the Rage Virus has decimated it or what happened to the main protagonist from the first film since Cillian Murphy will return, but it’s not clear in what capacity.

3. The Fantastic Four: First Steps

After so many flawed live-action versions of Marvel Comics’ First Family, Marvel Studios finally has creative control over the property. The new version of the famed superhero team/dysfunctional family promises to be more faithful to the spirit of the comic books that launched Marvel Comics. A lot is riding on the success of this new Fantastic Four film for the MCU and Marvel Studios because the team will be pivotal players in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga and due to the involvement of the studio’s president, Kevin Feige, to ensure the film’s success.

2. Superman

Filmmaker James Gunn formally launches the rebooted DC cinematic universe with his version of the Man of Steel. Superman promises to veer away from the dark and maligned version of Superman seen in the failed DC Extended Universe. This version of Superman will go back to its optimistic comic book roots and once again serve as a beacon of hope and justice in our world, and lord knows we need someone like Superman now. Superman must be well received, and its chances are high thanks to the talented Gunn fresh from the success of his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy.

1. Avatar: Fire and Ash

Never underestimate filmmaker James Cameron. He is a truly gifted and imaginary film auteur who has immersed audiences with his past films, including the first two Avatar films. Despite the complaints about the simplistic nature of the Avatar films, they are very immersive thanks to groundbreaking special effects and 3D technology. These aspects helped elevated Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water into event films that were very popular. Cameron will continue this immersion into an alien world with the third film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, as it further explores the verdant moon of Pandora, the continuing fight against human invaders and has the main characters encountering an evil tribe of Na’vi.

Notable Mentions:

Ash; The Black Phone 2; Companion; Elio; The Electric State; Five Nights at Freddy’s 2; Frankenstein; The Gorge; The Last Battleship; The Legend of Ochi; Lilo & Stitch; Love Me; M3GAN 2.0; Mickey 17; The Monkey; Planet Gliese; Presence; The Running Man; Star Trek: Section 31; Tron: Ares; Wolf Man; Zootopia 2

TV Shows

10. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

This third series set in the world of A Game of Thrones looks very engaging with its rich production as seen in clips and its premise about a wandering knight and his squire in the land of Westeros.

9. Peacemaker

The super violent super soldier from DC Comics was portrayed to great comic effect by John Cena, He will reprise his role for the second season with episodes written by James Gunn, who will also direct at least one episode.

8. It: Welcome to Derry

The infamous fictional Maine town of Derry featured in many of Stephen King’s literary works is the setting of this Max series that zeroes in on the evil influence of the malicious entity Pennywise.

7. The Last of Us

The second season of the acclaimed adaptation of the video game continues its story of Joel and young Ellie, survivors of the apocalyptic fungal pandemic that devastated the world. What is not known is if the series will continue to be as faithful to the game as it progresses.

6. Alien: Earth

Noah Haley writes and directs the first TV series based on the Alien franchise. Little is known about this prequel to the original film, other than it involves a ragtag group of soldiers dealing with a deadly threat to our planet after the alien xenomorphs arrive on our planet.

5. Severance

The horrors of the modern office workplace take an even more macabre turn in the second season of Severance. Adam Scott returns as Mark the employee of the mysterious Lumon corporation that erases the memories of its employees each time they go to and from work. The second season should answer many burning questions about Lumon and deepen its mystery.

4. Stranger Things 5

The Stranger Things saga comes to an epic conclusion with its fifth and final season. It has been a couple of years since the last season of Stranger Things, but the talented cast and crew of the popular ode to ‘80s sci-fi/teenage films will be able to pick up where they left off and conclude the show’s storylines. Fingers crossed that it can defy trends and be able to stick the landing with its final episodes.

3. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Captain Pike, Spock and the rest of the first crew of the starship Enterprise return in the third season. Thankfully the first episode of the season will conclude the cliffhanger thread that left us screaming at our TV screens when the second season concluded. The rest of the episodes should be able to continue to evoke the adventurous spirit of the original Star Trek with fresh, modern stories as the characters explore strange new worlds.

2. Andor

What set Andor apart from the typical Star Wars fare was its more mature and grounded tone with ambiguous characters and complex situations that fully fleshed out the Star Wars universe. The second and final season of the acclaimed Star Wars TV show about the conflicted Rebel spy Andor (Diego Luna) will lead directly to the classic film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Andor’s second season should be just as complex and mature as the first and continue to set the bar not just for Star Wars but sci-fi TV shows in general.

1. Daredevil: Born Again

The best Netflix Marvel TV series is revived for Disney + and returns many of the beloved actors from the original series starting with Charlie Cox as the blind lawyer/superhero, Matt Murdock/Daredevil, and Vincent D’Onofrio as the evil crimelord Wilson Fisk, who is now the Mayor of New York City. Initially there was some trepidation about the direction of the series as it supposedly strayed from the gritty tone of the Netflix TV show, but Kevin Feige corrected course and had the series reshot nearly from scratch. The result should be a superhero TV show that matches or exceeds the standards of the original Daredevil, which is still considered one of the best superhero TV shows.  

Notable Mentions:

Batman: Caped Crusader; Black Mirror; Doctor Who; Eyes of Wakanda; For All Mankind; Gen V; The Handmaid’s Tale; Invincible; Ironheart; Marvel Zombies; The Sandman; Wednesday; Win or Lose; Wonder Man; Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man; Zero Day

Aug 18 2024

Alien: Romulus Brings The Alien Franchise Back To Basics

The Alien films have had its share of stumbles with the last few films in the franchise. Director Ridley Scott’s recent attempts at expanding the lore of the franchise had mixed results with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. After Alien: Covenant did little to reinvigorate the franchise, it seemed as if the franchise would go dormant. Thankfully, this is not the case with this weekend’s release of Alien: Romulus and the upcoming TV show, Alien: Earth.

Alien: Romulus succeeds where most of the films in the franchise have failed with its back-to-basics approach that emphasizes horror and favors the use of practical special effects. Even though, there is CG used in the film, it’s usage is restrained and blends nearly flawlessly with practical effects. However, what makes the film stand out is the tight, claustrophobic atmosphere created by director Fede Alvarez, which harkens back to the original Alien.

The film opens with a spaceship probe finding the floating wreckage of the Nostromo from the first Alien film. Among the wreckage the ship recovers the fossilized body of the alien xenomorph that was ejected into space at the end of Alien.

Alien: Romulus shifts ahead to a mining colony on the planet, Jackson’s Star, and Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny), a young miner who is desperate to leave the colony along with her adoptive brother Andy (David Jonnson), an artificial being who is an older model of the artificial beings featured in other Alien films. After her attempts to legally leave the planet fail, she is approached by her friend Tyler (Archi Renaux) to help him and his crew of his ship, the Corbelan, to raid a derelict space station that entered the planet’s orbit, but will soon crash. The crew of the Corbelan consists of Tyler’s sister, Kay (Isabela Merced), his abrasive cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and the ship’s pilot, Navarro (Aileen Wu). Like Rain, Tyler and his crew hope to leave the planet but need cryopods to make the long journey to the next world. Tyler plans to raid the station in order to salvage unused cryopods for themselves.

Once the group boards the station, they discover that the crew aboard the station are dead because the xenomorph they recovered from the Nostromo revived, massacred the crew and irreparably damaged the station. Onboard the station are dormant alien facehuggers, which are a crab-like form of xenomorph that forcibly impregnates victims in order to hatch infant versions of the skeletal xenomorphs. It turns out that the station is owned by the company, Weyland-Yutani, which as seen in the other films is dedicated to capturing xenomorphs at the expense of anyone else in order to carry out scientific experiments on the alien creatures.

During their efforts to retrieve the cryopods, Tyler and Bjorn accidently revive the facehuggers, which soon imperils the crew of the Corbelan, as well as Rain. Andy, meanwhile receives a software upgrade in order to find out how to deal with the facehuggers and adult xenomorphs that are nestled within the dark corridors of the station. However this upgrade overwrites his benevolent personality and his motives become more nebulous as Rain and the others try to escape the station.

While Alien: Romulus has a fairly simple storyline, it delivers with well-earned jump scares and a pervading sense of dread and intense suspense throughout the film. It also has a few homages and call backs to the other films, which are sometimes a bit too-on-the-nose. But overall, these references pan out and the film manages to add new wrinkles to the Alien lore as the motivations behind Weyland-Yutani are fleshed out, which leads to some truly horrifying moments in the final act.

Fede Alvarez deserves much of the credit for how well Alien: Romulus turned out. He injects the film with a back-to-basics approach that focused on horror, which is what made the first film so memorable. Alvarez knows how to keep audiences in suspense with his use of shadows and sounds, which made the station feel like a haunted house in space as the deadly xenomorphs stealthily stalked their victims. He wisely keeps the creatures in the shadows, which adds to the feeling of primordial terror we and the characters feel while confronting the deadly and opaque unknown.

The actors turn in solid performances with Jonnson being the best standout thanks to his portrayal of Andy. At first, Andy, being an obsolete model, comes off as a sympathetic character from the way he is mistreated by humans. We can see that although Andy is synthetic, he has emotions and only wants to protect Rain and the others. But once, he receives his upgrade he transforms into a cold and unfeeling being who is compromised by the goals of the Weyland-Yutani company to the point that the characters cannot be certain that he has their best interests in his artificial heart.

By going back to basics, Alien: Romulus reinvigorates the Alien franchise by focusing on what made the first two films work so well. That is the sense of cosmic terror one may encounter out there in the unknown regions of space.

José Soto

Sep 26 2023

The X-Files: The Truth Is Still Out There 30 Years Later

The X-Files is celebrating 30 years and is regarded as one of the most influential sci-fi TV shows of all time. It was in September 1993 that audiences were introduced to now-iconic FBI investigators Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Mulder was obsessed with finding out what happened to his sister who was abducted by aliens when he was just a boy. This passion launched his lifetime pursuit of investigating the UFO phenomenon and other paranormal events. His bosses at the FBI were wary of his quest and partnered him with sceptical FBI agent Scully, who always tried to reign in Mulder’s forays into the unknown. Their evolving relationship and investigations into weird events, such as alien bounty hunters and cryptid creatures, endeared them to fans worldwide and made Mulder and Scully household names.

The plots of the episodes over the original 9 seasons consisted of either the conspiracy storyline that featured sinister govt. agents and alien forces conspiring to take over the world, or “monsters of the week”, where the duo investigated other strange events having to do with unexplained phenomena, such as psychic powers in the episode “Beyond the Sea” or sea serpents in the episode “Quagmire”, among other bizarre events. The conspiracy episodes became increasingly convoluted as the series progressed with the storyline involving an alien plan to colonize the Earth, and the aliens were assisted by covert government forces led by the villain of the series, the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis), the nemesis of both Mulder and Scully, who always attempted to untangle to web of lies they faced with each case. They’re helped by various allies during the show, such as their boss Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) who shielded them from attempts to have the X-Files section of the bureau shut down at great risk to himself, as well as the Lone Gunmen (Dean Haglund, Tom Braidwood, and Bruce Harwood), fellow conspiracy buffs who assisted Mulder from time to time in solving cases.

The influence of The X-files can’t be overstated as it led to many other shows involving alien conspiracies or other kinds of surreal mysteries that would have a complex story unfold over several seasons. Such shows that followed quickly after The X-Files debuted were Dark Skies, and spinoffs Millennium and The Lone Gunmen.  Even well after The X-files aired, in the 2000s, other shows appeared that followed in the footsteps of characters dealing with weird circumstances or events like Lost, Fringe and Supernatural, all of which are regarded as offspring of The X-Files, the first show that had mass appeal showcasing bizarre and unexplained phenomenon.

As for what inspired The X-Files itself, this would have to be the great but short-lived Kolchak: The Night Stalker starring Darrin McGavin, which aired in 1974-75 and is credited by X-Files creator Chris Carter as a huge influence on The X-Files. That show had a bumbling investigative reporter Karl Kolchak seeking answers to unexplained phenomenon very similar to what Mulder and Scully would take on 20 years later. McGavin even guest starred in two episodes of The X-Files portraying a character seen as the father of the FBI’s X-Files division, a tribute to Kolchak’s influence on the show.

The X-Files returned for two more seasons in 2016 and 2018 after a long hiatus and two theatrical films, which again showcased Mulder and Scully trying to unravel more alien and government plots, and finding the whereabouts of their child William. Overall, the show has become an icon in the TV and cultural landscape and has legions of devoted followers. It arrived at a time when the idea of UFOs and aliens were emerging in the mainstream as a serious topic and the show further pushed these conversations into the mainstream. The X-Files is still highly regarded 30 years later and will still be seen and imitated for many years to come.

C.S. Link