The Bones Series Finale Fulfilled A Promise Made To David Boreanaz In Season 1

The phrase “going out with a bang” is usually used as a metaphor but, in the case of the “Bones” two-part finale, that “bang” ended up being quite literal when the gang’s trusty laboratory blew up. 

The destruction of the Jeffersonian Institute Medico-Legal Lab was a part of the discussion from the start. While such conversations often take place in the writers’ room, this one took place at crafty between showrunner Hart Hanson and series co-star David Boreanaz. 

“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,'” Hanson explained to Deadline. “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…”

Boreanaz’s loathing of the Jeffersonian set had creative upsides, according to Hanson. “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,” he said.

Explosions weren’t the only option offered to David Boreanaz when it came to destroying his least favorite set. It’s rare for showrunners to be absolutely sure of the fate of their series, so the question of the ending of “Bones” came up far earlier than Season 12.

“Season 3 or 4 where I came to him and said, ‘If this is the year we’re gone, how would you like to drive a tank through the lab? That seems like it would be a fun way to destroy the lab.’ I was semi-joking but also casting around for how we would do this,” Hart Hanson went on to explain.

“Then we got picked up for two seasons, which was Season 5 and 6, so then we put it on the back burner,” he said. “But that was the way we were going to do it for a while, and then we actually looked into what that would entail and it was just impossible. The floor of the stage where we film, of Stage 6, would not have been able to bear the weight of even the lightest armored tank, so we ended up doing it the way we did it.”