New 'The X-Files' Promo Features Mulder Monologuing, Smoking Man Rasping And... The Flukeman?!

If nothing else, the upcoming revival of The X-Files will provide a welcome electric shock to our nostalgia. Yes, we'd very much like to see David Duchovny's Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully solving supernatural mysteries on television again, thank you very much. Still, nothing gives us the warm back-of-the-neck tingles like the thought of William B. Davis' Cigarette-Smoking Man (or Smoking Man, or Cancer Man, or C.G.B. Spender or whatever we're calling him these days) finding a way to return from the grave. After all, he died on the original series. Twice. And yet here is his voice, casually wedged into a new promo for the new episodes.

Pick apart the new X-Files promo for yourself after the jump.

The new promo (which premiered to the folks unfortunate enough to be watching the latest episode of Gotham) doesn't feature any new footage. Because it's animated. The retro style will invite instant Mad Men comparisons and it certainly is a slick, well-produced piece of advertising. It doesn't look or feel like The X-Files in any way, but it is cool and eye-catching. There are far worse ways to get the word out that this series is returning.

Now that you've watched it, let's briefly talk about that line that we hear around the 12-second mark. "They've reopened the X-Files," says the Smoking Man. Ooh. Unless this is a repurposed line from the original series (and we can't recall if it is), this is our first taste of the characters's return, even if he's only showing up in our ears.

Davis returning to this iconic TV villain has been a poorly kept secret for months now, but that certainly doesn't diminish our interest. The big question now is how this powerful government operator managed to survive being blown up with a missile in the series finale. After all, he had already been resurrected for that episode after he was betrayed and "murdered" a few seasons earlier. Davis is 77 years old. You can only cheat death so many times.

In any case, the return of the Smoking Man suggests that grand revelations are afoot in the new batch of episodes. They wouldn't be unearthing this monster of man back unless he was prepared to drop some serious stuff on Mulder and Scully.

However, there is more to this promo than the Smoking Man. There is a snippet of another good 'ol fashioned "Mulder rants about the truth" speech and fast animated appearances by a UFO, black oil... and the Flukeman?! Are they bringing the Flukeman back for one of the season's monster of the week episodes? Because if they are, we are going to start wetting our beds like it's 1992 all over again.

The X-Files will officially return on January 24, 2016.