Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
A skull thrown through a car windshield leads Brennan and Booth to a case involving a missing violinist, an old bank vault and the bones of a secret society. The killer they call Gormogon leaves evidence of a cannibalistic ritual and selects victims whose bones can be added to a silver skeleton. His attacks keep returning to the Jeffersonian: a murdered priest’s kneecaps have been removed, and the team finds a victim tree that lets them work out the pattern. Sweets joins the investigations, while Zack is back from Iraq and remains central to the laboratory’s deductions.
Outside the serial-killer case, Brennan visits Max in prison after his arrest and later works as his forensic adviser when he is tried for Deputy Director Kirby’s murder. Her colleagues testify for the prosecution, so she has to defend her father’s case from the other side of the courtroom; the evidence leaves enough doubt for Max to be acquitted. The season also brings back Brennan’s brother Russ, gives the team a baby to care for during a murder inquiry, and follows Angela and Hodgins as their marriage plans stay tangled with her still-valid marriage to Grayson Barasa.
Near the end of the season, Booth is shot after an investigation into an aspiring singer, and his funeral is staged as part of an FBI operation. Once the team learns he is alive, a new mandible and a lab explosion push the Gormogon case toward an insider. The silver skeleton disappears, and the investigation exposes Zack as the killer’s apprentice; he is removed from Brennan’s team and placed in psychiatric care. Zack identifies Gormogon’s house. Booth leads the raid and kills the cannibal when he attacks an agent, ending the immediate threat while leaving the team devastated by Zack’s involvement.