Bones' Season 12 Lab Explosion Happened Because Of A Promise Made Back In Season 1
Every TV show aspires to go out with a bang, though few take that directive quite as literally as "Bones" did.
After 12 seasons and nearly 250 episodes, the adventures of devotedly logical forensic anthropologist Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and the Mulder to her Scully, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz), came to an explosive conclusion in the show's final two episodes, "The Day in the Life" and "The End in the End." Along with all the scenes of characters making life-changing decisions and reminiscing (like you'd expect any time a cherished long-running series comes to an end), the two-parter naturally also saw the series' heroes squaring off against the season's Big Bad one last time: serial killer Mark Kovic (Gerardo Celasco).
Obviously, the Jeffersonian Institute Medico-Legal Lab team and their allies triumphed in the end ("Bones" was never the kind of show that would've wrapped up on a bummer note), though not before their home base was blown to smithereens. Navigating the rubble was as hazardous for the show's characters as it was for the actors playing them, including the one who, as it turned out, had proposed the idea of destroying the heroes' headquarters all the way back in season 1. As creator Hart Hanson revealed to Deadline on the day the finale aired in 2017:
"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. The character of Booth was the funky retro guy, and the lab was the opposite of that, so both the actor and much more importantly the character didn't like the lab."
'I want to blow up this lab'
Who amongst us hasn't fantasized about blowing up their workplace? (For legal reasons, I'm going to clarify that I'm joking.) David Boreanaz certainly did when he was working on "Bones," even back in the early days when it was unclear whether Fox would allow the procedural dramedy to live beyond a single season. Not that he could've guessed an off-hand conversation with his boss about doing precisely that would pay off in a major way more than a decade later. Hanson explained:
"David and I were standing beside Craft Services and he said — and by the way, this is within the first few episodes — he said, 'I want to blow up this lab.' And I said, 'If we last long enough and have warning, in the final episode we will destroy the lab,' and that made him very happy. Little did he know 12 years later..."
After his "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spinoff, "Angel," came to an untimely end when it was canceled after five seasons, one imagines Boreanaz was all the more grateful that he got to send Booth and the gang off the way he had always dreamed of. Perhaps if Disney and Fox can figure out the rights situation and get a "Bones" revival off the ground and running, Emily Deschanel will have a chance to decide which building they blow up next time.