The One Bones Callback David Boreanaz Insisted On Including In The Series Finale
"Bones" came along at just the right time to fill the hole left by "The X-Files." Chris Carter's semi-cult hit sci-fi horror investigation series wrapped up its original run on Fox in 2002, with nine seasons, a movie, and just over 200 episodes under its belt. Three years later, Hart Hanson would debut his own procedural on the network, with Emily Deschanel starring as the fact-minded forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan opposite David Boreanaz as the more emotional FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth. It didn't take a stretch to draw a line between the duo and "X-Files" FBI agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), from their near-identical personalities and dynamic to their evolution from platonic buddy team to romantic duo.
Since there was no point in delaying the inevitable, Hanson acknowledged the elephant in the room right off the bat. At one point in his and Katy Reichs' script for the "Bones" pilot, Booth states matter of factly, "We're Scully and Mulder," to which Brennan replies, "I don't know what that means." As luck would have it, it was Bones' response that would catch on, becoming the not-so-pop-culture-savvy hero's catchphrase and paving the way for her and Booth to step out of Scully and Mulder's shadow to carve out their own space in the history of TV couples. By the time "X-Files" returned to the big screen in 2008, "Bones and Booth" was already a "ship" that could rival just about any other.
A mammoth 12 seasons and 245 episodes after the pilot, it was time to wrap things up. But if you expected the "Bones" cast and crew to finish their victory lap without taking another playful jab at the show's most famous predecessor, well, you had another thing coming.
Bones still doesn't know who Scully and Mulder are
What network series finale would be complete without grandiose speeches and references to previous episodes galore? The "Bones" finale, "The End in the End," managed to take down two birds with one stone in that regard. As Booth delivers a big ol' affirmation of his love for Brennan (comforting her in the wake of the brief brain injury she sustained from their base of operations, the Jeffersonian, being blown up, which impeded her ability to take down Gerardo Celasco's big bad Mark Kovic), he reminds her, "And besides, we're way better than Mulder and Scully." Still distraught, she, of course, replies, "It's not their fault Chris Carter mucked up the revival" "I don't know what that means."
Much like the decision to blow up the Jeffersonian, this callback was largely done at Boreanaz's behest. As then-showrunner Michael Peterson explained to Entertainment Weekly upon the finale airing in 2017:
"The Mulder/Scully line that Booth alludes to in [the finale] was absolutely David. He was like, 'Yep, we gotta do it, we gotta do it.' And there were moments when we were like, 'We want to be humble, we don't want to compare,' and he's like, 'It's a joke from the pilot. You gotta do it.' And I think at the end of the day, he was right. We certainly didn't want to throw any shade on anybody else. But I think it worked at the end of the day, and it's funny for those fans who remember the callback to that very first episode."
To be sure, "Bones" fans undoubtedly got the joke right away and it's highly unlikely anyone else took it as a challenge. There's plenty of room for multiple memorable investigative will-they-or-won't-they pairings on television.