Vince Gilligan remembers the indescribable feeling he had when he first watched The X-Files. It was September 1993, and he was flipping through the TV channels looking for something new to watch. On came the pilot episode of The X-Files, which followed Mulder and Scully as they investigated a purported alien abduction in a small Oregon town. It’s a creepy, moody hour of television that would launch one of the biggest sci-fi TV shows ever, which Gilligan himself would cut his teeth on before creating future crime show classics Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. But 32 years ago, Gilligan was just another viewer blown away by this great, enigmatic episode of TV.
“Within five minutes, I was hooked,” Gilligan recalls to Inverse. “I thought, ‘Man, I love this. This show was made for me.’ But I love that I didn’t know anything about it. That made the experience richer and more memorable for me.”
