The X-Files Season 11 is coming and they've decided to bring back actress Karin Konoval to play a role in the new season. While her name might not be too familiar, she is a popular actress that has been seen in multiple TV shows including The Exorcist, Bates Motel, Arrow, Supernatural, Fringe, and The X-Files, to name a few. But it's her time with The X-Files that is important to note, and it's not just because she has been on the show before.
Entertainment Weekly reports that Konoval is coming back to the series, but she won't be playing the character that she portrayed last time. The character in question is from a Season 4 episode entitled Home, which was the second episode of the season back in 1996. The story was written as a standalone "Monster of the Week" story, which was unconnected to the series as a whole. Konoval portrayed Mother Peacock, a disfigured, inbreeding matriarch of the disfigured, inbred Peacock family. Home wasn't the only episode that Konoval was in, but it has gone down in history as one of the most notorious episodes of the entire series.
In the twisted story, it is revealed that after finding a corpse of a disfigured baby that it belongs to the Peacock family. After a series of events, Mulder and Scully focus their attention on the Peacock house and it's there where they make the horrifying discovery of Konoval's character. The agents find a quadruple amputee hidden under the bed who has been inbreeding the family for years with her sons. At the end of the episode, Mrs. Peacock and her oldest son escape in a car, off to start a new inbred family somewhere else.
The episode only aired once on October 11th, 1996 on Fox and the network decided to never rerun the episode due to the graphic images and hardcore subject matter. Though the episode gained many favorable reviews, many trashed it, which just helped to cement Home as a fan and cult favorite over the last 20 years. Many reviews looking back on the legendary episode have been favorable, but many agree that the episode could never have been made in a post-9/11 climate because of harsh subject matter. Some viewers apparently didn't really enjoy watching a disfigured infant being buried alive. In addition, Home has been deemed one of the scariest episodes in the show's history.
Karin Konoval is returning to The X-Files Season 11, but she will not be reprising her role as Mrs. Peacock this time around. Series creator Chris Carter had this to say about Konoval's return.
"While Karen Konoval won't be reprising her role as the mother-under-the-bed in the fan-favorite episode 'Home,' she will be returning in a tour-de-force performance in an early episode. Or, more accurately, performances."
It's not clear at this time just exactly who or what Konoval will be playing this season, but her return is definitely welcome and certainly intriguing after reading Carter's description. The X-Files is returning sometime during midseason on Fox and will star David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and Mitch Pileggi along with their infamous costar Karen Konoval. It was also recently announced that Robbie Amell and Lauren Ambrose will be back as young FBI agents Miller and Einstein.