The Bones Final Season Scene That Made Emily Deschanel Break Down In Tears
Any time you end a long-running show, you can guarantee the tears will flow in abundance. But even with all the waterworks going on at home during a series finale (among other water-related concerns), it rarely holds a candle to all the crying that transpires behind the scenes. Working in close proximity with the same core group of people over a decade takes an emotional toll on anyone, all the more so when your job demands long hours and relentless emoting. Then again, in the case of "Bones" star Emily Deschanel, her character's typical lack of a visible emotional reaction meant that she spent most of the series doing her best bawling off-camera.
Thankfully, by the time the show wrapped up its 12th and final season in 2017, Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan had loosened up enough for Deschanel to do her share of weeping onscreen, even in the middle of a funny callback in the show's otherwise intense finale, "The End in the End." The episode, and much of season 12 for that matter, was indubitably big on thrills and spectacle, with Brennan, her colleague-turned-husband Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz), and the rest of their co-workers at the Jeffersonian Institute scrambling to regain their bearings after their base of operations is blown up. Yet, for all the emotions flying fast and hot throughout the season in general, it was a relatively quieter moment that punched Deschanel right in the heart during filming: Bones' farewell to her "squinterns."
Those squinterns grow up so fast
Compared to your average real-world boss, Bones was positively loving towards her "squinterns," as she affectionately called her interns (a term that would gradually catch on with the other mainstays at the institute). But again, this is Dr. "Two plus two equals four; I put sugar in my coffee and it tastes sweet" Brennan we're talking about, so she wasn't always buddy-buddy or emotionally open with them in the customary sense. Still, by the final season, she had gotten better about actually expressing how she felt when the time came to bid her "squints" farewell, which made for a moving exchange both on- and offscreen.
As Deschanel recalled to Entertainment Weekly on the day the finale aired in 2017:
"There are so many scenes leading up to the finale that got to me, and then scenes in the finale. The last scene with the squinterns — it was really special because I rarely get to see them all together. We've all had so many different times, just personally, off camera, and so many things have happened for all of them and for me over the course of working with them over so many years. Carla Gallo started tearing up, and then I started crying [...] My character is looking back and thanking them for everything all of their characters have done, so that was an emotional thing on camera and off, and it really allowed us to recognize the importance of that time. And it was the last scene I was going to film with them. [...] But the one saying goodbye to the squints, that really got to me."
Who says Bones could never be a cinnamon roll? All it took was 12 years of hunting down serial killers and couples therapy with Booth.