The X-Files' Forgotten Spin-Off Series Deserved A Far Better Fate Than A Quick Cancellation

In the pilot of "The Lone Gunmen," there's a scene where the eponymous conspiracy theorists lament their newspaper's poor sales. They want their truths to reach a mass audience, but their stories only preach to the converted. It's also a fitting metaphor for "The Lone Gunmen," a TV spin-off that is mostly celebrated in cult circles after failing to match the widespread success of its parent series, "The X-Files."

Co-created by Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz, the series centers on Ringo Langly (Dean Haglund), Melvin Frohike (Tom Braidwood), and John Fitzgerald Byers (Bruce Harwood). Operating from a dark, dingy, and cluttered workspace, they spend their days uncovering shady government plots and solving murder mysteries, often with comedic results.

Still, "The Lone Gunmen" could be disturbingly prescient at times. The pilot revolves around a deadly plot to crash a plane into the World Trade Center — an episode that aired in March 2001, just months before 9/11. Fox ultimately canceled "The Lone Gunmen" after 13 episodes, with Gilligan citing its move from Sundays to Friday nights as the main contributing factor behind the low ratings. That said, he still thinks highly of the show.

Vince Gilligan's career took off in a big way following "The Lone Gunmen," with critically acclaimed crime dramas like "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" among his most successful projects. Even so, the celebrated creator believes this short-lived "X-Files" spin-off can be added to the ever-growing list of shows that were canceled too soon.

"'The Lone Gunmen' to this day is a show I'm still proud of, and I will always be proud of," he told The X-Files Lexicon. "It sort of points to an interesting phenomenon about television — you can't really tell in advance whether a show is going to work for an audience. I would hold 'The Lone Gunmen' up against anything that I have done before or since."

Though often portrayed as comic relief on "The X-Files," the trio is ultimately killed off in Season 9's "Jump the Shark," which aired after the spin-off was canceled. They later appear briefly in the revival, in Season 10, Episode 5, "Babylon," in a psychedelic hallucination of Mulder's (David Duchovny), and in Season 11, Episode 2, "This," where a digital version of Langly appears on Mulder's phone. Still, the characters were given a send-off following the show's cancellation, even if it is a heartbreaking one.