When Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) was 12 years old, his sister was abducted by aliens. Ever since then, his goal was to uncover the truth behind the abduction. So when Mulder grew up, he joined the FBI and, after establishing himself as a star agent, he pursued a series of cases known as the X-Files, which investigate unexplained phenomena (including alien abductions). Even after tanking his reputation at the FBI and narrowly escaping several attempts on his life, Mulder’s pursuit of the truth about his sister never wavered.

Believe it not — and we know you want to —a similar level of drive and dedication was required to create Lego's new X-Files set, which is available to order now.

“This has been a 10-year process of me trying to make this set,” Brent “Wetwired” Waller tells Polygon.

The 1,478-piece set depicts the most iconic location from the series, Mulder’s disheveled office, complete with the “I Want to Believe" poster on his wall, filing cabinets full of X-Files, and the pencils Mulder would chuck into the ceiling. On top of that — like, quite literally on top — is a spooky-looking forest scene with an alien abduction in progress. The set also has an impressive array of minifigures, including the stars of the series, Agent Mulder and Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson). They’re joined by their most trusted ally, Assistant Director Skinner, and their sometimes ally, Mr. X. There are also two villains: the assassin Alex Krycek and the mysterious Cigarette Smoking Man (named Carl Busch on the box to avoid it looking like Lego endorses smoking). Finally, the set gives us two memorable monsters from the series, a grey alien and the Flukeman from the season 2 episode “The Host.”

The set is the result of the Lego Ideas program, where Lego fans build a set, submit it to Lego, then it gets voted on by other Lego fans. If the set reaches 10,000 votes, it's then considered for approval by Lego to make an actual set. But that process can take a long time, as Waller, who designed it, will tell you.

Waller previously had success with a Ghostbusters set through Lego Ideas, as well as a Seinfeld set. But his X-Files set was arguably the most challenging to get over the finish line.

“In 2014, I made Mulder's office, just the bottom section without the UFO that's on the actual set now,” he says.

In addition to being a big Lego fan, Waller is a dedicated watcher of The X-Files, even his online codename, “Wetwired,” comes from an episode of the show. Originally, Waller simply designed the set for his own purposes, but he also decided to submit it to Lego Ideas.

“They wouldn't accept it at the time because it was deemed too mature,” says Waller. This was back in 2014, when Lego was much more centered around just making products for kids.

While the set wasn’t approved, it did receive a boost from Gillian Anderson, who played Agent Scully on The X-Files. Waller had custom Lego minifigures of Mulder and Scully made for the set that he posted online. Somehow, Anderson saw them and one of her representatives reached out to Waller, who sent her his duplicates. She then posted a picture of her and Duchovny with their respective minifigures.

While Anderson’s post went viral, Waller knew Lego wasn’t interested in The X-Files so he gave up until 2019, when he saw that another user had submitted a different X-Files set to Lego Ideas and it had been approved for consideration, though it had not yet reached the 10,000 votes to be considered for an actual set. This motivated Waller to resubmit his Mulder’s office set. Once he did, it reached the necessary 10,000 votes by Lego fans, but Lego still rejected it.

Once again, the set was shelved for a few years until 2025, when Lego Ideas held a contest for 1990s-themed sets. Waller saw his opportunity and decided to create an even more ambitious design.

“I was like, ‘Okay. It didn't succeed the first time because I just wanted to create Mulder's office. What can I do to make it encapsulate the entire show?' To me, X-Files is always spooky forests in Vancouver, UFOs, aliens," he says. "So I was like, 'If I can tie the two together somehow, maybe like a UFO in the forest?’”

Rather than create a typical flying saucer, Waller built a recreation of the triangular ship seen in the show’s second episode. He then placed it atop the forest scene with a clear plastic Lego tube that doubled as a tractor beam and submitted the set for a third time. From there, Lego chose the top five sets in their 1990s competition, including Waller’s, and the fans voted on their favorite of the five.

Waller’s X-Files set won. Finally, it would be made.

After this point in the process, Lego redesigns the set. In this particular case, it was made to be about two-thirds the size of Waller’s original, a change Waller says he’s happy with.

“They've literally just tightened everything," he says. "Everything's compressed and more efficient.”

Lego also made it so that the two levels of the set can separate easily for play, something Waller’s design couldn’t do.

With the set finally available to the public, Waller says he’s quite satisfied. The only other thing he says he’s doing for this project is posting “recipes” on Instagram for fans to make characters that weren’t included with the set, like Deep Throat and the Lone Gunmen. Beyond that, the set so perfectly encapsulates the series that he’s not even sure what other X-Files Lego set would be worth making.

“Maybe an art piece,” Waller suggests, like a Lego version of Mulder’s “I Want to Believe" poster. Beyond that, after more than a decade, he’s ready to move on to other Lego submissions.

If only Mulder had been so lucky with finding his sister.