The Correct Order To Watch The X-Files

Few people know the highs and lows of fandom experience quite like fans of "The X-Files." One of the hottest shows of the '90s was also one of the messiest, featuring retconned central mythology, a sizzling will-they-won't-they relationship that culminated mostly in vaguely implied hookups, and way too many Mulder-less latter season episodes. The show also features a surprisingly complicated release order, with two movies, a revival series, and one (or two, depending on who you ask) spinoffs.

When "The X-Files" fans reminisce about the show, they typically seem to be talking about the seven seasons that ran between 1993 and 2000, when David Duchovny's Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully were on the hunt for aliens, monsters, and cigarette-smoking men week after week. But while it might be easier to cordon off the "simpler times" section of the show and call it canon, the fact remains that the official "X-Files" story doesn't end when Duchovny first leaves the show. Since series creator Chris Carter has had a hand in every version of the story from the '90s to today, there's not even a "Gilmore Girls"-style escape clause giving the iffier parts of the show an out. It's all "The X-Files": you just have to decide which parts of it are worth watching.

To watch "The X-Files" chronologically (and in release order, as they're one and the same), you'll have to make sure not to let the "autoplay" function on your streamer of choice take over. That's because there's an important story piece you'll be missing if you allow the season 5 finale, "The End," to lead straight into the season 6 premiere, "The Beginning." Between the two seasons, 20th Century Studios released "The X-Files: Fight The Future," a feature-length movie that's also sometimes just called "The X-Files." It's a good movie that throws the show's skeptic-versus-believer schtick out the window in favor of a big, bold, clearly sci-fi plot. It also features lots of vital Mulder and Scully bonding time, and includes their first on-screen kiss (albeit in a deleted scene).

After you've finished that, hop back over to Hulu (the current streaming home of all 11 seasons of the show) for the last stretch of the show's original run. After finishing season 9, you'll have to hit pause again to go check out "The X-Files: I Want To Believe," the reunion movie released in 2008. The movie isn't particularly popular among fans, and its box office run was hindered by its release date (it debuted one week after behemoth blockbuster "The Dark Knight"), but it's still a part of Chris Carter's overall vision for the franchise. Finally, once you've seen "I Want To Believe," pop back onto Hulu one more time for the two revival seasons of the series, released in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

Of course, if we're being realistic here, this isn't how everyone watches "The X-Files." It's a show that benefits as much from jumping around to key arcs and great one-offs as it does from the steady but wildly inconsistent drip of all 218 episodes. If you're binge-watching the series on streaming for the first time, there's a chance you might accidentally miss the movies entirely, which is okay: they're easy to return to, and the latter one, in particular, doesn't tie in too much to the rest of the franchise. Some people also skip seasons 8 and 9 of the show, which focus less on the show's original duo and more on newer characters Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish) and John Doggett (Robert Patrick). Others still like their "X-Files" firmly in the 20th century, ignoring not just seasons 8 and 9, but also "I Want To Believe" and the newest seasons.

All of these variations are valid enough for a series that's both lengthy and widely accepted to be inconsistent, but completionists, hardcore fans, and people who just really love looking at Anderson and Duchovny's faces should certainly try to sit through everything "The X-Files" has to offer. Later seasons feature some underrated gems, like a season 10 Darin Morgan episode featuring both Rhys Darby and Kumail Nanjiani, or a season 8 episode that did "Memento" before the world had seen "Memento."

If you are one of those completionists mentioned above, you might want to add two shows that are related to "The X-Files" to your watchlist: 2001's "The Lone Gunmen," a short-lived (and awkwardly timed) show about the trio of conspiracy-minded geeks who sometimes help Mulder and Scully, and "Millennium," a largely unrelated show about a mind-reading FBI agent that wrapped up with an "X-Files" episode rather than a traditional series finale. "Millennium," which aired from 1996 to 1999, isn't always considered canon among fans as its ties to the flagship series are slight, but both are made by Chris Carter and the fictional worlds collide for one significant moment in season 7 of "The X-Files."

If you do choose to watch "The Lone Gunmen" and "Millennium" in addition to "The X-Files" — and, again, this is definitely extra credit at this point — the simplest way to do so is to watch "Millennium" between seasons 6 and 7 of "The X-Files," and "The Lone Gunmen" before season 9, as an episode late that season helps tie up loose ends left open by the already-canceled spinoff. If you're feeling really ambitious, you can even watch these two shows and the flagship series in precise release order (for example, you'd watch the "Millennium" pilot between "The X-Files" 4x03 and 4x04, since that's when it aired), but that's an extremely advanced move, and we'll let you do the timeline math if you choose to attempt it.