Recently, Emily Deschanel, who playes Temperance Brennan on FOX’s Bones, spoke to the press about the season 8 finale, about the return of Pelant and how his character has affected Brennan and her relationship with Booth and more. Read on to see what she had to say.
On Pelant’s return
Emily Deschanel: In this episode, Pelant returns. Obviously the last time we saw him, Booth had injured him. He shot him. So, it seems at this point, Pelant has set his sights on Booth. Before, as you recall last season, he seemed to be targeting Brennan. So, it appears that he’s targeting Booth. In fact, the body that we discover, Booth knew the victim. It’s very close to home, involving the FBI and a case Booth is involved with, and so, it feels like it’s very targeted towards Booth, and of course, that’s terrifying to Brennan because she realizes that Pelant could get him, that Booth is in danger, and Pelant hasn’t gotten to any of us yet on the team. He hasn’t really hurt us, but he’s really taking it up a notch this episode, and you’ll see how he affects their lives.
Jump with me to read more from Emily.
On how far Brennan will go to protect those she loves
Emily: I think Brennan will—as you see in this [upcoming] episode, Brennan is willing to go farther than she’s ever gone to protect somebody that she loves, and I think there’s really no bounds to her protecting—what’s another word to use, because you can’t say certain things about the episode and your season…? So, you saw that she’s willing to go pretty far to save someone that she loves, and now, you’ll see that she’ll do the same for other people that she loves to protect them, to protect her life with them. I’ll leave it at that.
On whether Pelant’s return affects Brennan’s decision about her relationship with Booth
Emily: I think that Pelant’s presence and intense presence and targeting Booth and feeling Booth’s mortality and the possibility of him being in danger and the concept of even living without him kind of brings things to the forefront for Brennan when she thinks about [her relationship with Booth], and I think that she would be thinking about things in that way, but I think that Pelant kind of makes things happen more quickly and maybe in a more intense way.
On Brennan’s mindset going into the finale
Emily: It’s scary. They just thought that they were going to lose one of their own already with Arastoo, and Pelant is scary. He’s somebody who’s brilliant. Maybe Brennan’s a little bit smarter than him, but it’s hard to say. She hasn’t seen somebody quite as terrifying and challenging as him and targeting them. It’s pretty scary. She’s been raising her child with Booth. There are so many things that have happened in the last two years, and they kind of don’t really have a moment to think about their lives and themselves and their relationships. You see Booth and Brennan get together. They get pregnant right away and then have to raise a child together, and Brennan’s always been this person who said I’d never have children, I’m not going to get married, I’m not interested in that, and she’s kind of going along, but she’s not forced to really examine her life in that way and her relationships. So, when this happens with Pelant, it really forces her to look at her life and herself and her relationships and her feelings and why she feels certain ways about certain things and make her questions some of her core beliefs. It’s a very pivotal time for her.
On whether or not we’ll get closure about Pelant in season 8 or if he’ll return in season 9
Emily: There will be some closure, but the story is definitely ongoing. That’s kind of a tricky answer, but I don’t know how better to answer it. The story continues into next season. That’s not to say that we haven’t captured him in some way by the end of this season, but with Pelant, it’s never as simple as we think as we’ve learned. He’s changed his complete identity. He’s very tricky. He’s very wily in his ways. So, the story does continue with Pelant into season nine.
On how Pelant stacks up against other foes throughout the series
Emily: I think we’ve gotten more—I don’t know. I find him terrifying in his calm, steely way about him. His nerdiness makes, you’d think would make it less scary, but I think it makes it more scary, and if you know the guy who plays him, Andrew Leeds, he is like the friendliest, sweetest person, so it’s just really strange. Some of the actors had never met him and then we ran by—my husband’s actually known him for years. So, I ran into him and to Tamara Taylor who plays Cam Saroyan, and she said “oh my gosh, he’s so different from his character.” She had no idea. She’d only seen him on screen. So, I thought that was very interesting.
But I think we’ve gotten better and better with—with our serial killers, we’ve gotten better and better. That sounds like such a silly thing to say, but I think he, to me, it’s more terrifying, you have this brilliant person who’s able to really get around the law in so many different ways whether it’s getting out of an ankle bracelet or finding ways around not being able to use computers and changing his name and identity and DNA so that – not changing his DNA, but changing the records of DNA – so that he is known as a completely different person. That is so terrifying and so brilliant that I think I’d have to rank him as the number one for serial killers.
The Grave Digger was terrifying and that Brennan and Hodgins being buried alive was pretty terrifying, and you have Gormogon which was very scary, but I rank Pelant as number one right now. Hopefully, we keep building upon things and make them scarier and scarier, if we have more serial killers that is.
On Booth & Brennan’s relationship with Sweets
Emily: Well, we had a fun kind of parent/child relationship for a while where we had Sweets staying with us. He’s kind of like our child in a way, or we’re kind of treating him that way, and we don’t believe he’s able to move out on his own and then he does. So, we think, we have, as Brennan says in an episode, that he’s the only person that she could think of living with them ever. He’s a person that Booth and Brennan both like equally and where you can qualify emotions. So, I think they’ve become very close with Sweets having lived with him, and I think it’s hard when he moves out. It’s hard when he’s dealing with stuff from feeling affected by Pelant as well in this coming episode. We feel it when he’s affected.
Don’t miss the season 8 finale of Bones tonight on FOX at 8/7c… It’s gonna be an intense one!
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