Could Bones Season 13 Happen With David Boreanaz & Emily Deschanel?

Television Drama Shows

"Bones" — the procedural drama centered around forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her FBI counterpart Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) ran from 2005 to 2017, spanning nearly 250 episodes and 12 full seasons. But will it ever come back for a revival?

It seems like everything is getting a reboot or revival now. Earlier this year, they reinvented "Mean Girls" as a musical starring Reneé Rapp, and shortly after that came out, Jake Gyllenhaal headlined a remake movie of the '80s classic "Road House" for a new generation. In Ryan Gosling's (delightful) action comedy "The Fall Guy," Lee Majors and Heather Thomas, who played the lead roles in the original series, show up in cameo appearances at the very end of the film. Throughout the past few years, everything from "Cobra Kai" to "Fuller House" to the long-awaited fourth season of "Veronica Mars" has reunited original cast members for another go-around. So why not "Bones?"

It's important for me to say this right away: there is currently no "Bones" reboot or 13th season in the works. But if one did, what could it be about? And has anyone from the cast and crew weighed in on the possibility? Here's everything we know about season 13 of "Bones" (which, again, does not yet exist in any way, shape, or form).

Why hasn't Bones season 13 happened yet?

When "Bones" came to a close in 2017, it was clearly a bittersweet time for Emily Deschanel, David Boreanaz, and the rest of the show's cast and crew. Ahead of that ending, some of them spoke up, like one of its executive producers. "I absolutely am not considering this the end," Michael Peterson told TVLine's Michael Ausiello in 2016. "I am in full-on denial. I've been working on the show for eight-and-a-half years. It is my family. I adore it here. I don't want to leave. And the idea of having some kind of reunion in a year or two ... I would not rule it out." Not only that, but Peterson said something very interesting about the mere prospect of coming back: "We haven't figured out what we're going to do if it does come back. But I can tell you that 99.9999 percent of the people here would rush to return."

With that in mind, why hasn't that come to fruition? Probably because, in the aftermath of the "Bones" series finale, its cast and crew have stayed pretty busy (Boreanaz, for one, currently plays the lead role on the CBS series "SEAL Team"). Everyone who watched the incredibly bizarre reboot seasons of "Arrested Development" knows full well that if you can't get the original cast into the same room, you might as well not bother. So what have other "Bones" veterans said about returning?

Everything the Bones cast and crew have said about a 13th season

Frankly, it seems like pretty much every prominent person involved with "Bones" would come back and do it all again — because they've all said as much since 2017. In 2021, Michaela Conlin, who plays Angela Montenegro on the show, did an interview with Collider where they inquired about a reunion of sorts. "Oh my gosh, I don't know, that's a really good question," Conlin responded. "Not that I've heard, but I feel like those things usually come together pretty quickly. I think scheduling would probably be the most difficult thing because everybody's off doing other things, but it would really be funny and fun to revisit that I'm sure. I talked to Emily [Deschanel] yesterday, and Tamara [Taylor] and John Francis Daley and Michael Grant Terry, all those guys. We're all very in touch, so I'm sure it would just be a question of wrangling everybody together. But who knows? Anything can happen."

Okay, so clearly they're all still good friends — but you definitely can't do "Bones" without its star. Luckily, Emily Deschanel told TVLine in 2022 that she was optimistic. "You know, I think it's always possible," Deschanel revealed. "David Boreanaz said, 'Nope,' he's not doing it, but never say never for me. I don't know, it's possible, I'd be open, I don't know."

Even the showrunner himself is definitely down. As Hart Hanson said to Variety in July 2023, "We are in contact with each other. Everybody on 'Bones' is in contact with each other. At separate times, it's like, 'What are you doing? What's the availability?' But we do keep talking. And every once in a while, we are all nostalgic enough to think, 'Maybe we should do it again.' Who knows? Maybe this will bump-start us."

What could happen in Bones season 13

So what would even happen in a 13th season of "Bones" Apparently, some former cast members have ideas about that. As David Boreanaz said to The AV Club in 2022, he's not particularly interested in reprising many of his past roles — for example, he thinks he's way too old to ever play "Angel" from the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" franchise ever again — but his "Bones" character still holds some interest. "Seeley Booth, I think, may be a little bit more intriguing — as far as getting back to see where he's at with Temperance Brennan," Boreanaz mused during the interview. "And that banter. You just can't beat that. I think that may be more of a realistic approach, as far as I'm concerned."

This is a good point — fans would certainly love to catch up with Bones and Brennan, whose slow-burn romance was a central focus of the series and ended in marriage and a baby — but the original series also left some pretty big unanswered questions behind for a potential reboot to address. For example, whatever happened to Angela and Jack Hodgins' (T.J. Thyne) baby after the series ended with Angela still pregnant ... especially considering that she was caught in an explosion at the Jeffersonian while pregnant? What does the number 447 mean, and why does it come up so often during the series? Did Hodgins make any major changes to the Jeffersonian after he was left in charge during season 12, and does Camille Saroyan (Tamara Taylor) ever return to relieve him of his duties? There are so many directions for a possible "Bones" revival to choose from, so if it ever happens, fans will hopefully get some major answers.

Who will the stars of Bones season 13 be?

Obviously, any "Bones" revival would need to feature the show's original cast members — which, according to their comments on the matter, would suit them just fine — so in an ideal world, Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz would reprise their roles as Temperance Brennan (or, as Booth calls her, "Bones") and Seeley Booth. They'd hopefully be joined by Michaela Conlin, as Angela Montenegro, T.J. Thyne as Jack Hodgins, and Tamara Taylor as Camille Saroyan, but some people can't possibly return. That includes John Francis Daley's FBI psychologist Lance Sweets, who dies in the first episode of season 10.

The end of "Bones" did reintroduce a pretty fascinating original character, though — Dr. Zack Addy (Eric Millegan), the assistant turned convicted killer who originally left the show during its third season (when it was revealed that Zack was working alongside a notorious and vicious killer known as "The Gormogon"). When Zack resurfaces for the second time in season 11 — he appeared sporadically throughout seasons 4 and 5 — he asks the team at the Jeffersonian to prove that he's not up to his old tricks and working with a brand-new killer dubbed "The Puppeteer." They prove that he's actually not guilty this time, but he still has to finish his sentence ... so perhaps a "Bones" revival could catch up with Zack and explore his post-prison life.

"Bones" is streaming on Hulu now.