Given the numerous, complicated mythology arcs introduced throughout its initial nine-season run, it's surprising that more shows didn't spin off of Chris Carter's 1993 hit show "The X-Files.
For the uninitiated, "The X-Files" was about a pair of FBI agents named Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) who were assigned to the Bureau's most unusual cases, often filed under the letter X. The unusual cases often involved alien abductions, man-sized liver flukes, psychics, shape-shifters, psychic photography, and other such paranormal monkeyshines. Much of the show sprung from a sense of paranoia aimed at the United States government and its tendency to hush up the mind-blowing, supernatural truth about the world. Only a believer like Mulder and a skeptic like Scully would have the intelligence and the wherewithal to find the truth.
The X-Files" did have two spinoffs. The 1996 series "Millennium," about a forensic profiler (Lance Henricksen) investigating some quite immediate end-of-the-world lore, didn't seem like a spin-off at first, but it was eventually revealed the show took place in the same universe as "The X-Files" (and, indeed, saw a crossover). And the 2001 series "The Lone Gunmen" was a lighter, more comedic version of "The X-Files" starring a trio of amusing conspiracy-obsessed kooks (Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood, and Dean Haglund) that Mulder frequently consulted.
The X-Files" was revived for two additional seasons, addressing the ongoing saga of William, Scully's little-seen son, forced into hiding for his own protection. Mulder is likely the boy's father, although the sinister Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) also claims fatherhood via an eerie alien-related insemination plot. In a 2018 interview with SFX, Duchovny, now having effectively retired from "The X-Files," announced that he would like to have seen William's story continue.
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