'X-Files' Reboot Cast Adds Fan Favorites; What Happened To The Lone Gunmen?

Fox’s return of “The X-Files” has announced that it is bringing back some pretty key cast members from the show’s original run. Now, it’s been officially confirmed that fan-favorite characters, The Lone Gunmen, will appear in the series reboot.

The news of the Gunmen’s return was first announced on Twitter by one member of the trio, Dean Haglund. The 49-year-old actor responded to a question about The Lone Gunmen possibly returning now that characters like Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and The Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis) are coming back.

The Lone Gunmen got their start in the first season of “The X-Files” and quickly became breakout fan-favorite characters. The trio is made up of actors Haglund, Tom Braidwood and Bruce Harwood. According to Deadline, they make up a rag-tag team of government watchdogs and conspiracy theorists who often find themselves engaged in reluctant partnerships with the FBI, particularly Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson).

The Lone Gunmen were so popular that Fox even gave them their own short-lived spinoff series in 2001. Unfortunately, it didn’t resonate with fans as much as their guest roles on “The X-Files” did and the show only lasted 13 episodes before the characters were brought back as guests in Season 9.

Fans of "The X-Files" will understand just how big of an announcement that The Lone Gunmen’s return truly is. In the ninth and supposedly final season of the show, the gang met an heroic end by sacrificing themselves to contain a biological weapon from spreading to the mass populace in the episode “Jump the Shark.”

With the Gunmen supposedly dead, and given a respectful burial in Arlington National Cemetery, many are wondering how they’ll return to the series when Fox revives it in 2016. A flashback is the most likely scenario given the returning principal cast and the fact that bringing characters back from the dead can often be a tricky thing. However, in the non-canon comic book that continued where the show left off, Entertainment Weekly notes that the characters were brought back revealing that they’d faked their death with the help of the FBI and were now working for them on special projects. However, it’s unclear if Season 10 will follow the comic books at all.

The Lone Gunmen will join many returning cast members as well as new faces like Joel McHale, Lauren Ambrose, Robbie Amell and Kumail Nanjiani when “The X-Files” returns for a six-episode miniseries next year.