10 TV Shows That Built Off the Legacy of ‘The X-Files’

Many TV shows in the past twenty years have drawn inspiration from The X-Files. These are but a few that have attempted to build off its legacy.

1. Supernatural

This is perhaps the most obvious choice on this list, but it is nonetheless possibly the closest to what The X-Files was, if not in execution, then certainly in spirit.

Supernatural had (and to continues to have) a much lighter and more involved tone, but all-the-same, it still manages visuals that are equally as haunting, unsettling, downright terrifying at times as The X-Files was so famous for doing.

On top of that, it has possibly the most important aspect of The X-Files, which is: a duo hearing about something unexplainable, investigating it, and doing something about it in the name of public good. Supernatural wasn’t the only show since The X-Files to attempt this (some of them appearing later in this list), but it was the most effective, especially where tone and execution were concerned. Also, like The X-Files, it is a show that flat-out refuses to go away.

2. The River

This found-footage series was many things — a particularly good show did not happen to be one of them. It failed to figure itself out, for the most part and was unceremoniously cancelled after its first season.

That being said, however, it was one of the closest shows, perhaps since The X-Files itself, to match The X-Files’ episodic, detached tone that so often left the viewer with answers that weren’t answers at all or felt viscerally unsatisfying, which was often the point.

The River could have — possibly, eventually — been a decent replacement to The X-Files, if only it had been given more time, and slightly better.

3. Lost

The X-Files and Lost, if nothing else, have one thing perilously in common: its respective fan-bases were rabid at an almost unprecedented level.

A part of what made Lost succeed, and gave it a foothold into the popular consciousness, is its fans’ attachment to the overall mythology and, even more than that, their overwhelming willingness to take to the internet and chatrooms to express their theories and their complaints and their individual fandom.

This was something that, even though shows like Twin Peaks and The Simpsons did earlier, The X-Files was able to do in such a significant and pronounced way that it would later enable Lost to become what it was, for better or worse.

4. The Night Stalker

The ironic thing about this is that the original series from the 70’s, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, was a primary source of inspiration for The X-Files. However, when the reboot came out in 2005, it bore more of a similarity to The X-Files than it did its own roots.

Structurally, it bore a striking resemblance to The X-Files: replace David Duchovny with Stuart Townsend; Gillian Anderson with Gabrielle Union; and a missing sister with a dead wife, and you essentially have the same show.

5. Gravity Falls

This animated Disney Channel series lovingly took its cues from a great may sources in pop culture, but none more so (other than Twin Peaks and Lost) than The X-Files.

Dipper, voiced by Jason Ritter, serves at many times as a younger version of Mulder that never experienced his sister get abducted by aliens, instead his sister Mabel, voiced by Kristen Schaal, becomes his more supportive and believing Scully as he investigates the weird properties of his summer town. It was one of many shows in the past twenty years to realize that you can do The X-Files, but also have a lot of fun with it.

6. Special Unit 2

The pitch for Special Unit 2 was pretty simple: The X-Files, but a bunch of campy fun that treats the supernatural like a normal procedural. Whatever Special Unit 2 may have lacked in plot or character, it certainly made up for in its unalienable sense of fun. It never, not even for a moment, dared to take itself as seriously as The X-Files and it worked for the most part.

It was, by no means, a great show, but it entertained and knew how to make its supernatural qualities work, something that The X-Files often excelled at.

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