The X-Files Meets Severance In The New King Of Sci-Fi TV

Published Aug 24, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While Apple TV’s Severance is one of the best sci-fi shows in years, the streaming service mixed its corporate satire with The X-Files to produce an equally acclaimed series only a few years later. Every streaming service wants to be the leading light of every genre, but inevitably, each streamer ends up prioritizing some types of shows over others to build a brand. For instance, Netflix’s Breaking Bad competitor Ozark joined Narcos, Mindhunter, Adolescence, and their many Harlan Coben adaptations to prove the streaming service was heavily invested in the genre. Similarly, while Apple TV’s earliest high profile releases, The Morning Show and Ted Lasso, were a starry character-driven drama and comedy respectively, the streaming service has since proven that visionary sci-fi shows are its true focus. Yes, Prime Video has the underrated Tales from the Loop and Netflix has Altered Carbon, Sense8, and Stranger Things. However, Apple TV has Silo, the Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation, the Monsterverse spinoff Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Dark Matter, For All Mankind, and two more sci-fi shows that are among the best of the last decade. Apple TV’s Severance, a corporate satire with an A-list cast including Adam Scott, Christopher Walken, and Patricia Arquette, was an early example of the streamer’s interest in daring, high-concept genre experiments. However, where Severance was clearly inspired by the classic sci-fi anthology series The Twilight Zone, 2025’s equally acclaimed Pluribus was more akin to the ‘90s procedural classic The X-Files. Severance’s eerie corporate satire focused on a world where everything wasn’t quite as perfect as it seemed, while Pluribus, like The X-Files, focused on a protagonist investigating alien interference in the world around them. Pluribus Is Already One of the Best Sci-fi Shows Of The 2020s By the time the show’s story begins, Pluribus’s heroine, Carol Sturka, is already in a bizarre existential predicament. Rhea Seehorn’s obstinate romantasy author is one of about ten people who were lucky, or unlucky, depending on your perspective, to be left untouched by the invasion of an alien hive mind that otherwise assimilated every human being on Earth. The “Joining” turned almost all of humanity into a permanently cheerful, unfazed hive mind known as “The Others.” While “The Others” are determined to assimilate Carol and her fellow scant survivors, they aren’t particularly aggressive about achieving this goal. In fact, what makes the series feel so much like vintage episodes of The X-Files is just how unnervingly all-encompassing the villains are. Like the sprawling conspiracy at the core of The X-Files, “The Others” essentially infiltrated every facet of human life, so they can afford to wait for Carol and her fellow survivors to give up hope and eventually assimilate. Pluribus’s Vince Gilligan Has A Surprising Link To The X-Files Franchise The thrust of the show’s action, then, is its focus on Carol’s attempts to undo the Joining in tandem with the few fellow survivors she can find across the rest of the world. What follows is a pulse-pounding mystery laced with dark humor that combines the satirical edge of Severance with the conspiratorial plotting of The X-Files. Of course, savvy readers will know the show has another link to The X-Files franchise. Before he created Breaking Bad and later the critical hit Pluribus, writer/ director Vince Gilligan had a hand in some of the most acclaimed episodes of the original run of The X-Files. Specializing in the show’s monster-of-the-week outings, Gilligan wrote “Soft Light,” “Bad Blood,” and many more classic episodes, including the season 6 classic “Drive,” which guest starred Breaking Bad’s future leading man Bryan Cranston. Thus, for all of Pluribus’s similarities to Severance, the Apple TV show will always also have an obvious link to The X-Files, too. Release Date November 6, 2025 Network Apple TV Directors Adam Bernstein, Zetna Fuentes, Melissa Bernstein Writers Ariel Levine Creator(s) Vince Gilligan