The X-Files “I Want to Believe” Poster’s Origin Story (2024)

On January 24,The X-Filesreturns to television in the form of asix-part miniseries.As the premiere date nears, original fans of the show—those who discussed it on thealt.tv.x-filesnewsgroup in the ‘90s, because social media did not yet exist and the internet was barely a thing—have been showing their enthusiasm in snake person ways, posting tens of thousands of tweets and Instagram posts labelled with an#iwanttobelievehashtag.

“I want to believe,” a core sentiment of the show and its viewers, is a phrase that comes from an iconic item on the show: the UFOposter that hangs above the desk of FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder, everyone’s favorite socially isolated, orally fixated, paranoid insomniac alien chaser. When TheX-Filesbecame a hit in the mid-’90s, this poster was found on the bedroom wall of every self-respecting X-Phile. It was a special link to the show and Mulder’s hopeful yet tortured conviction that the truth was out there, shrouded in conspiracy, waiting to be uncovered.

Within the world of the show, the origin story of the “I Want to Believe” poster is that Mulder bought it from a head shop on M Street in Washington, D.C. The poster is ever present in thepitiful basement office to which the supernaturally focused X-Files are assigned. It makes its first appearance in the pilot, and laststhe whole nine seasons. The poster also appears in the1998X-Filesmovie,Fight the Future, as well as the horrendous abomination that was the 2008 movie, cruelly also titledI Want to Believe. I want to believe that this movie was never made. But there’s no need to talk about that.

Seven years ago, while doing publicity for themovie we won’t talk about,X-Filescreator Chris Cartertold Smithsonian.comthat thelook of the poster “came from me saying, ‘Let’s get a picture of a spaceship and put–Ed Ruscha-like—“I want to believe.”’” A bonus bit of insider info for copyright infringement nerds: Carter also said that no one got clearance for the UFO photo, which had been taken in Europe by a man named Billy Meier. Years after the show’s debut, this oversight caught up with him in the form of an intellectual property lawsuit. In response, a new poster appeared in the show in its fourth season, with a slightly different photo of a flatter UFO.

Mulder’s main quest—his all-consuming obsession—is to find out what happened to his sister Samantha, who was, as he recalls, abducted from the family home by aliens when he was 12 and Samantha was eight. Over the course of the show, Mulder and his FBI partner/soulmate/medical doctor/mother-of-his-child-but-that’s-a-whole-complicated-story Dana Scully uncover bits and pieces of evidence that point toward a grand conspiracy: that the U.S. government has been collaborating with extraterrestrials in an alien-human hybrid program. Among other things.

The X-Filesportrays a world full of chaos, unsolved mysteries, and phenomena that don’t align with rational perceptions of the universe. People shape-shift into other human beings, turn into monsters, use telekinesis toharm others, and—in the case of the Cigarette-Smoking Man—cheat certain death multiple times. Terminal brain cancer, possibly of extraterrestrial origin, is diagnosed, then vanishes without a trace. Nothing makes sense. Answers are rare.

Faced with this uncertainty, Mulder wants to believe in everything. Aliens, the conspiracy, human-sized parasitic worms: all of it. He yearns for something greater and more meaningful than what’s immediately around him.He wants to believe there is a clear and supernatural explanation for Samantha’s disappearance, an event that gets reframed and distorted and muddled by conflicting discoveries and increasingly unreliable memories as every year passes.

Scully, the rationally-minded skeptic, does not want to believe in anything outside the realm of science—except God. This highly selectiveapproach to belief is one of the more intriguing parts of the show, and adds a layer of “huh” to the mystery-wrapped enigma that is Dana Scully. It also invites questions about the role of religion, the role of science, and whether the two ought to be regarded as opposing forces or parts of a whole.

The phrase “I want to believe” is different than “I believe.” It is hopeful, but indicates an awareness of doubt and disappointment and fallibility.And it taps into thedeepest human fear: what if this is all there is? Without aliens and without God, we’re just us: a bunch of intelligent yet stupid humans crammed onto a spherical rockin an inconsequential speck of infinite space. That can’t be it. We must be special. We must be important.“I want to believe so badly in a truth beyond our own,” says Mulder in a seventh season episode called “Closure.” What’s in front of us is not enough.

In the classic season threeepisode “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” a D&D-playing loner named Blaine Faulkner talks about how much he wants to be abducted by aliens. To be chosen. To be special. But his yearning is a little less profound than Mulder’s. “I hate this town,” he says. “I hate people. I just want to be taken away to someplace where I... I don’t have to worry about finding a job.”

Regardless of the nature of the motivation,wanting to believe, and having the fervor of that desire burn within you, inevitably invites disappointment. In Mulder’s case, it is the repeated agony of being tricked and mislead by the forces that conspire against him—particularly when heis repeatedly introduced tocloned versions of his sister, all of whom are mere facsimiles of the person he has spent his life searching for. For X-Philes, it was the secondX-Filesmovie. Jesus Christ. That thing was terrible. Anyway. We don’t need to talk about it.

The mini-seriesis almost here, and, judging fromthe previews, it looks like it’s going to be amazing. And the iconic posterisback on screen–the trailer for the new episodesshows someone enteringthe empty, gutted X-Files office, findingthe poster lying on the ground and kicking it, tearing it in two.

When the trailer featuring the poster kick appeared, some OGX-Filesfans had a bit of a freakout on Twitter. The “I Want to Believe” poster may beavailable everywhere online for $7.99 and up, but it stillmeans a lot. It sums up our hopes and fears. We allwant to believethat our faith will be justified, that our quest will meet a redemptive end, that our dedication will be rewarded—whether that reward be the full story of a sister’s disappearance, an eternity in Heaven or a six-episode mini-revival of our favorite ‘90s sci-fi show.

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This article is a part of No One’s Watching Week, the time of the year when the readers are away, and your tireless editors have run amok. For this week only, Atlas Obscura, New Republic, Popular Mechanics, Pacific Standard, The Paris Review, and Mental Floss will be swapping content that may be tooout therefor any other week in 2015.This article originally appeared on Atlas Obscura.