Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Booth and Brennan begin the season in London, where a case with Scotland Yard becomes personal after one of the British investigators is murdered. Back at the Jeffersonian, they work with rotating interns as Cam manages the lab and Angela and Hodgins try to recover from their separation. Zack contributes from psychiatric care on a difficult murder investigation, but he is no longer Brennan’s assistant. Max also takes a museum job teaching children, which Brennan first resists because his criminal past could put the lab’s evidence under suspicion.
The Grave Digger returns and abducts Booth, prompting the team to search for him while the kidnapper demands evidence from Hodgins. Booth is trapped aboard an explosives-laden Navy ship and encounters an apparent vision of Corporal Teddy Parker, the soldier he could not save in Iraq; he uses what he learns in the encounter to escape before the ship detonates. Brennan later recognizes that U.S. Attorney Heather Taffet, who has overseen the case, has injuries matching evidence from another victim. The team finds proof linking Taffet to the kidnapping equipment and identifies her as the Grave Digger. Later testing finds Booth has a brain tumor that requires surgery in the finale.
Before the finale, Brennan asks Booth to father a child, treating the request as a donor arrangement rather than a declaration that they are a couple. The finale shifts into a dream during Booth’s postoperative coma: he and Brennan are married and run a nightclub where the team investigate a murder in altered roles. Brennan’s story supplies much of the dream’s world, and its case reaches a resolution before she tells Booth that she is pregnant. Booth wakes and asks the real Brennan who she is; the marriage and pregnancy belong to the dream.