Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
After recovering from the brain surgery that ended the previous season, Booth returns to the FBI while Brennan comes back from a Guatemala dig. Sweets questions whether Booth’s new certainty that he loves his partner grew out of his coma dream, and Booth hesitates to risk their working relationship. They resume solving Jeffersonian cases together, including a government lockdown over unidentified remains and a difficult trial involving the Gravedigger, whose earlier abductions still haunt the team.
The hundredth episode revisits Booth and Brennan’s first case, one year before the pilot. As they correct Sweets’s account, the flashback shows how their first investigation nearly ended their partnership before it had begun: they were attracted to each other, but Brennan left after their brief encounter and they did not work together again for a year. In the present, Booth admits he wants a life with her; Brennan says she cannot return his feelings, and he decides he must move on while preserving their partnership.
The Gravedigger’s trial puts the team’s own experiences with Heather Taffet back in court, ending in her conviction. Hodgins and Angela marry before the team separates. In the finale, Brennan accepts an invitation to lead a Maluku Islands research project, while Booth takes an Army assignment training soldiers. The newlyweds also leave Washington for a year abroad, and Daisy heads to the same Indonesian dig, leaving Sweets unsure whether their relationship can wait. Booth and Brennan part as colleagues rather than a couple, promising to meet again at the National Mall’s reflecting pool in one year.