“Bones” is one of the most unique police procedurals that ever aired on network television. Featuring forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz), the series follows the pair as they solve crimes and have a slow-burn romance. Accompanied by other scientists — affectionately called “squints” by Booth — as well as Booth’s partners and colleagues, they track down serial killers, solve cold cases, and rotate through a cast of interns who hope to learn something from Dr. Brennan.
The show aired for 12 seasons, upping the ante when the team’s base of operations — the Jeffersonian Institute Medico-Legal Lab – was blown up at the end of Season 12. The final season was filled with plenty of surprises already, from the return of the original intern, Zack Addy (Eric Millegan), and the fan-favorite side character, Dr. Gordon Wyatt (Stephen Fry), to possibly solving a case that plagued them since Season 3. While the lab was the site for plenty of highs and lows in the series, removing it from the equation entirely was something that was promised from the earliest days of the show’s production.
The show’s creator made a promise in Season 1
While the bomb going off in the Jeffersonian Institute’s lab may have come as a surprise to fans, especially since the lab had always made it through numerous other dangerous situations, its destruction dates back to a comment made by David Boreanaz to the show’s creator, Hart Hanson, in the early days of the first season.
Speaking with Deadline to promote the series finale in 2017, Hanson shared how the idea first came up while he and Boreanaz were hanging out on set. “In Season 1, David Boreanaz, the human being, hated the lab set; he hated working on it, he didn’t like it, and part of that is his sense of things, just who he is. The other part was that it wasn’t Booth’s place, if you know what I mean,” Hanson recalled. “David and I were standing beside craft services and … he said, ‘I want to blow up this lab.'”
Hanson promised that if the show managed to stay on the air for a while and they were given enough advance notice about the show’s ending – meaning if they knew it would be the last season — they would “destroy the lab” in the series finale. He kept his promise, blowing up a place in which the characters had experienced death, heartache, joy, and more than one safety lockdown for 12 seasons.