'X-Files' ratings grow to top its own series finale

Ratings-wise, The X-Files has just swallowed its own tail. The updated numbers for the premiere of Fox’s sci-fi revival are finally here, and they’re even bigger than we thought.

The first episode last Sunday score 21.4 million viewers when including DVR playback and streaming (the streaming portion, by the way, is only 1.1 million of that total). Moreover, the first of the six new episodes had a 7.8 rating among adults 18–49, behind only the premieres of AMC’s The Walking Dead and Empire this season.

Fox points out the performance is actually bigger than the average of the most-watched season of the show (season 5), though that’s unfairly stacking the data by comparing one premiere that ran after a major football game plus DVR and streaming to a full season average of live episodes.

Perhaps more intriguingly is that the X-Files premiere beat its own “series finale” by 24 percent in the demo (thus the tail-swallowing reference).

The second episode on Monday was strong too, and in some ways more impressive given that the show had to self-start. Fox will surely watch to see how the remaining four episodes perform, but its certainly starting to seem likely that we could have more X-Files in the future.