LEGO set of Mulder’s basement, 1,478 pieces of plastic

LEGO has revealed set 21369, The X-Files. It costs $199.99 / £179.99 / €199.99, lands August 1 for LEGO Insiders and August 4 for everyone else, and it builds Fox Mulder’s basement office with a forest clearing and a hovering UFO stacked on top.

I do not normally write about LEGO. But it is the holidays, this is my own site, and I do what I want.

Gillian Anderson in a hotel bed reading a magazine with a UFO on the cover The teaser opens with Scully reading a magazine called The Return. Subtle. / Credit: The LEGO Group

Twelve years from fan build to shelf

The set started as a LEGO Ideas submission from Brent Waller, a 3D artist in Brisbane who goes by wetwired on the platform. He first built Mulder’s office in 2014 while rewatching the series, and the project eventually won LEGO’s Build Your Nostalgia 90s Throwback challenge.

“I was obsessed with The X-Files from the moment I first saw it in the ’90s. I originally built Mulder’s office back in 2014 while rewatching the series,” says Waller.

Waller is not a first-timer. He is also the fan behind the LEGO Ideas Ghostbusters Ecto-1 and the Seinfeld set, which makes him one of the few people to get three fan designs turned into retail boxes.

Eight minifigures

The office and the forest section display separately or as one stack, and the office is loaded with the details you would check for. The I Want To Believe poster is there. So are the pencils sticking out of the ceiling, the ones Mulder lobs straight up when he is bored or fed up and stuck down in that basement with nothing to do.

Mulder and Scully minifigures standing in the basement office section of the LEGO set The office section, with the nameplate reading The Truth Is Out There. / Credit: The LEGO Group

You get eight minifigures: Mulder, Scully, Walter Skinner, Mr. X, Alex Krycek, Cancer Man (Carl Busch), The Flukeman and a grey alien. LEGO lists the Cigarette Smoking Man under his real name, which is a tidy way to get him into a box aimed at adults without putting a “cigarette” in a LEGO hand. A nice way to stay politically correct.

A grey alien minifigure standing in a LEGO forest lit green The forest clearing, where the grey alien and the UFO live. / Credit: The LEGO Group

Buy it between August 1 and 10 and you also get 40896 Scully’s Lab as a gift with purchase, while stocks last.

Gillian Anderson is back as Scully… for 59 seconds

LEGO announced all this with a 59 second film of Anderson back in Scully’s shoes, in a hotel room, receiving an anonymous box with no sender.

She pulls on a pair of latex gloves and treats 1,478 LEGO pieces as evidence, dictating into a tape recorder: “Multiple components.” “Interlocking system.” “This is where it gets implausible.”

Play

Gillian Anderson pulling on a blue latex glove in a dim hotel room The gloves go on before the bags are opened, which is exactly right. / Credit: The LEGO Group

She holds up the Mulder minifigure and says “I don’t remember you being so small.” Anderson plays it completely straight, which makes the whole thing work.

“I didn’t expect to be stepping back into Scully’s heels to investigate a LEGO set. It has been so much fun revisiting that world all these years later,” says Anderson.

Paying the LEGO Ideas tax

The finished LEGO X-Files set on a desk, with the office below and the UFO above the forest The finished build: Mulder’s basement office below, a forest clearing and a hovering UFO above. / Credit: The LEGO Group

$200 for 1,478 pieces is not cheap by piece count, but that is the LEGO Ideas tax on a licence, and I already know how this ends for me.

Set 21369 goes on sale at LEGO.com on August 1 for Insiders and August 4 for everyone else.