There were rumors swirling around earlier this year (more on that below) but it seems that a social media campaign has grabbed the attention of the network executives at Fox and shaken some money out of the tree. The hit science fiction series The X-Files is going to get a second chance to return from whichever alien mothership hold it’s been imprisoned in and come back to network television.

Thirteen years after the original series run, FOX has ordered the next mind-bending chapter of THE X-FILES, a thrilling, six-episode event series which will be helmed by creator/executive producer Chris Carter with stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson re-inhabiting their roles as iconic FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. This marks the momentous return of the Emmy- and Golden Globe Award-winning pop culture phenomenon, which remains one of the longest-running sci-fi series in network television history.

The announcement was made today by Dana Walden and Gary Newman, Chairmen and CEOs of Fox Television Group and Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of THE X-FILES. Production on THE X-FILES event series is set to begin in summer 2015. Further details remain under wraps and will be announced at a later date.

“I think of it as a 13-year commercial break,” said Carter. “The good news is the world has only gotten that much stranger, a perfect time to tell these six stories.”

While it’s impossible to prove what moved the Powers That Be to do this, I have a strong suspicion that it started in a rather odd place. Earlier this year I listened to an episode of Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist podcast where Gillian Anderson was the featured guest. It was a great interview which covered many aspects of her life, including a lot of her time on the X-Files and the various issues she ran into while acting on that show. The hosts also teased the episode as having a “big announcement” regarding the star. As it turned out, Gillian Anderson had absolutely no news about a reboot of the series, but mentioned that she would “be delighted” if such an opportunity came around. The guys asked her if David would be up for it. She said she’d never talked to him about it and had no idea, but she “thought he might be willing.”

That was good enough for the Nerdist crew and they immediately launched the hashtag #XFiles2015, prompting all of their listeners to push Fox to pull the trigger on it. Who knew? Apparently the original cast was all on board and now, only a few months later, they’ve made the announcement.

Before you ask in the comments, yes… I know this has nothing to do with politics and perhaps you don’t care. Some of you may be too young to even remember the show very well. But I was a huge X-Files fan. I loved the concept and the production and the writing… pretty much the whole package. Yes, a couple of seasons went off on some tangents which had me wondering, but overall it was one of the great moments of television history. I’m glad to see this happening, and I hope it gets picked up for at least a full season.

One big question, though… will The Lone Gunmen return? They seemed to become sort of a mythical nerd legend in their own right.