Why Bones Killed Off Vincent And How The Creators Tried To Avoid It
Somewhere, as "Euphoria" struggles to reassemble its cast of former no-names-turned-movie-stars for season 3, the team behind "Bones" is wistfully inquiring, "First time?" Hart Hanson's nearly-unstoppable procedural dramedy not only transformed Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz into household names over its 12 seasons (while Boreanaz had already played Angel in the "Buffy" universe, it was Booth that cemented him as a staple of Mom and Dad Television), but it also took many of its supporting players to the next level. The only downside was, this meant it was sometimes necessary for the show's creatives to kill off a fan-favorite member of the Jeffersonian's staff once the actors behind them had filled up their workload with outside projects.
Most infamously, "Bones" took Booth's honorary little brother Lance Sweets out back behind the shed after John Francis Daley's directing career made it impossible for him to continue playing the cherished FBI psychologist on a regular basis. It wasn't fun for anyone (least of all Daley), although he was far from the only cast member whose character got Old Yeller-ed. Vincent Nigel-Murray (Ryan Cartwright), the adorkable English Squintern with a mind full of miscellaneous factoids, similarly became the victim of the titular bullet-wound in season 6's "The Hole in the Heart," giving us one of the show's more heartbreaking moments. Had the "Bones" producers gotten their way, it never would've happened, either.
"That was horrible for us. We hated that," executive producer Stephen Nathan told TV Tango in 2011, with Hanson explaining that, for storytelling reasons, the show's creatives knew that "someone was going to die [in season 6] and we waited until we knew each of our Squinterns, what they were going to be doing the following seasons." Even then, they did their darndest to spare Vincent from his tragic fate.
Vincent Nigel-Murray might be dead but Nigel Vincent-Murray lives
Remember how "The Walking Dead" was so pleased with itself after leaving fans wondering if Glenn (Steven Yeun) might somehow manage to avoid his vicious, bloody fate from the original comics at the end of season 6 ... only for the major entertainment outlets to blunder in a couple of weeks later and announce Yeun's casting in Bong Joon-Ho's "Okja," inadvertently ruining the gambit? Had you been paying close attention to the news cycle around "Alphas" in late 2010, you would have gotten a similar heads-up that Vincent's future wasn't looking too rosy, back when Cartwright was newly attached to star in Michael Karnow and Zak Penn's Syfy superhero drama.
Despite that, Hanson already had a plan for getting Cartwright back on "Bones," had "Alphas" quickly fizzled:
"Also, I've always thought in the back of my mind that should the Syfy series go away, I wish it only ill, that is one of the few characters that you could conceivably bring back as a relative or where you can laughingly say, Vincent Nigel-Murray is dead but Nigel Vincent-Murray is still alive. And because he can do a million accents; he is such a chameleon and we actually had a good little weep. I think that's everyone when he left."
Chiming in, Nathan added, "Oh, it was terrible," before (jokingly?) claiming, "We called the other show and told them he stunk and they shouldn't hire him. We did everything we possibly could, but they just ..." Whether the show's producers actually went so far as to trash talk Cartwright's name to their "competitors" or not, it's clear they and everyone else on "Bones" treasured their Squinterns like proud parents. It's no wonder Deschanel wept her eyes out saying goodbye to them in the final season.