‘The X-Files’ Season 11 Spoilers: Will Joel McHale Return As Tad O’Malley?

Joel McHale may be returning for Season 11 of “The X-Files.”

In a recent interview with TVLine, series creator Chris Carter revealed that there’s a possibility that McHale will reprise his role as Tad O’Malley in the upcoming season of the Fox series. “If he shows up, it would be in episode 10 [aka the finale],” Carter said. “But I’m not sure yet.”

McHale’s O’Malley made his first appearance as the host of a right-wing conspiracy theory show in the Season 10 premiere. In the episode, O’Malley enlisted Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully’s (Gillian Anderson) help in investigating Sveta’s (Annet Mahendru) claims that she was abducted by men using alien technology. After investigating Sveta’s abduction, Mulder and O’Malley decided to take their theory public. However, before a statement could be made, O’Malley mysteriously went missing.

In the Season 10 finale, O’Malley’s show went back on air and he began to report on a contagion spread across North America, in which people were admitted to hospital, and some were even dying. Although showing signs of infection himself, O’Malley remained on the air as long as he could, and notified his audiences that a cure was being worked on.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly in February last year, McHale said that he didn’t know whether viewers will see O’Malley again. “I don’t know. [But] I would like to,” the “Community” alum said when asked if O’Malley would be back in future seasons of the series. “If they do more episodes, I’d be there in a New York minute if they want me.”

In an interview with Observer in January last year, Rick Millikan — who has been a casting director for “The X-Files” since day one — shared how he referred McHale to Carter. “I threw some names at Chris Carter [for the role of O’Malley], and I showed him Joel’s reel where he did some acting, but he also did some interviews and ‘Soup’ stuff,” Millikan said. “Chris … had never met Joel in person. We just hired him off looking at these tapes. Chris felt Joel was the exact tone and person that he wanted. And it just turned out, coincidentally, that Joel is a huge fan of ‘The X-Files,’ and would’ve probably paid us to do the role.”

Being a huge “X-Files” fan that he is, McHale was shocked when he found out that he got the role of O’Malley. “Believe me, I thought it was a prank when my agents first called,” the actor told Esquire in 2015. “It was a dream come true.”

Would you like to see McHale return as O’Malley in Season 11? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

“The X-Files” Season 11 premieres on Wednesday, Jan. 3 at 8 p.m. EST on Fox.