The LEGO designers behind 21369 X-Files have explained how they landed on the set’s cast of characters – and why they changed from the original submission.
Fan designer Brent Waller originally proposed seven minifigures for his contest-winning X-Files set: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, the Grey Alien, Walter Skinner, the Syndicate Leader, the Jersey Devil, and Eugene Tooms. The final model discards the latter two characters and replaces them with Alex Krycek, Mr. X and the Flukeman, while renaming the Syndicate Leader as Carl Busch.
The designers responsible for bringing 21369 X-Files to shelves have revealed how they landed on that character selection in a roundtable interview with Brick Fanatics and other fan media. “There are so many iconic characters in The X-Files,” says Graphic Designer Anne Godsk. “We had to look at the ones that people remember, and also what characters had the most influence on the main characters.
“I was excited and surprised that my beloved Flukeman actually made it through!”
Flukeman is a pretty good candidate for the most horrifying LEGO minifigure of 2026, recreating one of the show’s most terrifying villains from its early seasons. Appearing as a ‘monster of the week’ in the second episode of Season 2, the Flukeman is a sort of anthropomorphised flukeworm created by the Chernobyl disaster, which rampages through the sewers of New Jersey and kills at least two people.
“We needed another iconic monster,” explains LEGO Ideas Design Manager Jordan Scott. “You know, not just the grey alien, and we have the black ooze, but a cool-looking monster. So Flukeman was quite a fun one. It is very different-looking from most minifigures, but I think that's also part of the fun.”
The Flukeman wasn’t part of Brent’s original submission, but it would have been if he’d had more time – and he specifically requested the character in an early call with the LEGO Ideas design team.
“The X-Files was submitted a few times,” Brent says. “I initially didn't have the whole UFO stuff on top, and then when it came to the ‘90s challenge, I thought if I can pull that off, I'll quickly submit it. So there wasn't really much redesign on the minifigure side.
“I really wanted Flukeman there, but I didn't have the experience to really pull him off graphically. So I put him aside. And that was one of the first calls – I'm like, if we can get him in, I'd love to get him in because I think he's the most unique monster, and probably the most recognisable outside of the alien.”
Speaking of the alien: Brent reused the grey alien from Collectible Minifigures Series 6 in his original submission, but the finished model debuts a brand new design. According to Jordan, that was on the cards from ‘very early on’.
“The one from the old Minifigures series was cool, but it didn't really fit this kind of aesthetic,” he explains. “We wanted to make something that still felt very LEGO, but was a little bit more detailed. And then I think the graphics on it were also really awesome to get, because we could have easily moulded the eyes or moulded more features, but we wanted to try to keep it as streamlined and simple as possible, and I think it looks good.”
“It’s always nice to have like an element where there's not too much moulded [features] on it, because then you can just, as a graphic designer, go nuts and do weird stuff,” Anne adds. “So that's a nice thing.”
It wasn’t just the monsters and aliens that required additional consideration, though. The X-Files originally ran for nine seasons from 1993 to 2002, returning for two more seasons in 2016 and 2018, alongside feature films in 1998 and 2008. That’s a lot of ground to cover in a single set, and the team had to narrow focus to a particular era to land on the overall character design.
“That will impact certain things like Scully's hair,” Jordan says. “You know, her hair changes, so which seasons do we focus on and make that new wig for? I think the one we picked is super iconic, and it's a really nice wig in general. But then, adding in the black eyes for Krycek and things to give another story – I think that's what led to expanding the cast a little bit more.”
Indeed, while Scully is based on her appearance in early seasons, and the Flukeman hails from an early Season 2 episode, Krycek’s alternate face print under the influence of the black oil is a reference to a Season 3 episode – so even though the designers had to reduce the scope of the minifigure line-up to a degree, 21369 The X-Files isn’t (as a whole) locked into a specific moment in the show.
Above all else, the driving force behind its eight-strong cast appears to have been the same ethos that propels the wider LEGO portfolio, in Ideas and beyond: what are the most iconic things for fans of this particular subject matter?
“I did rewatch a lot of the show, and sometimes it’s just like your memory of something is clouded, so you think something that has a big part is actually a very small part in a huge story,” says Senior Graphic Designer Matt Parsons. “So that also helped us decide which characters we felt were important to the main story, and which monsters are memorable.”
21369 The X-Files debuts on August 1 for LEGO Insiders (ahead of a wider release on August 4) for £179.99 / $199.99 / €199.99. 40896 The X-Files: Scully’s Lab is free with all purchases of its companion set through August 10, or while stocks last.
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