'Bones': Emily Deschanel and EP Jonathan Collier Preview Season 11

Just when you thought Bones lovebirds Brennan and Booth (Emily Deschanel, David Boreanaz) were giving that whole FBI thing a rest, the crime-solving duo is making a return to the Jeffersonian. On the heels of a final-feeling Season 10 finale that had Booth and a very pregnant Brennan walking away from the FBI and the Jeffersonian, Bones is back for an 11th season with the premiere episode “The Loyalty in the Lie.”

Yahoo TV spoke to both Bones executive producer Jonathan Collier and series star Emily Deschanel ahead of the Season 11 premiere to find out what we can expect for everybody’s favorite forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan, and her husband and professional partner, Special Agent Seeley Booth, this season. “Hang on to your hats! Season 11 is all about shaking things up,” says Collier. “We’re challenging every relationship, every character.” Adds Deschanel, “Fans will not be disappointed.” Read on for more.

On where things pick up this season:
Collier: They’re good, they’ve been productive. Booth’s been an instructor… so he’s out of the line of fire, out of the field. Brennan’s been taking on assignments and writing her books. It’s a different life for them. And we pick up with, I can only tell you, is a cataclysmic event that throws them back into their old occupation.

Deschanel: The show picks up about six months later. We have a new baby and basically we see Brennan and Booth together, whole family, it’s kind of this beautiful scene.…They’ve been away from the crime world officially for those months, and Booth goes off to work and he doesn’t come home. Then the Jeffersonian finds a body that they suspect might be Booth. Booth is missing, we think this body may be him, and… Brennan comes in, basically, to prove that this isn’t her husband dead. Her wishfully thinking, because there’s lots of indications that it may actually be Booth, from the facial reconstruction looking so much like him, to similar injuries that he has sustained. So it’s a big intense episode and we’re racing to solve this crime, to find Booth if he is alive.

On this season’s guest stars:
Deschanel: Kim Raver [will play] an FBI agent [Grace Miller], who is convinced that Booth is up to no good. Basically, she suspects him of things and so she’s very much at odds with Brennan and a lot of the other characters, and we find out that she has her own reasons for being on this case and for being suspicious of Booth. We find out she’s not being objective, basically. She’s hiding something.

Collier: We potentially [have] a huge one. I can only tease it because it’s still not confirmed yet. [Editor’s Note: We’re guessing he was teasing recently announced guest star Betty White.]

On that buzzy Bones/Sleepy Hollow crossover episode:
Collier: We have our story, we’ve been working with the Sleepy Hollow writers. I can’t tell you what happens in it, but what I can tell you is that their characters are on our show and our characters are on their show. Neither story could be told without the other show. We solve our case on our terms, in our world, on our show. We’re a science-based show, don’t forget, and they’re a fantasy-based show, and I love that what we came up with their writers works for both of our shows. It was a really fun challenge for us.

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Deschanel: I can tell you that we team up with the characters Ichabod Crane and Abbie Mills. There’s a lot of room for some humor in there, because obviously Brennan doesn’t believe in any kind of supernatural stuff, the time travel thing that happens on that show. Brennan, of course, is going to try to logically explain some phenomenon that might point to some kind of time travel or supernatural-type things happening with the body, explaining certain evidence that she finds. It’s interesting to see those worlds collide.

On how this season’s finale will be handled after last season’s last minute pickup decision:
Collier: Right now, the way we’re approaching it is we’re very excited about the resetting of the show, about where our characters are. We feel like we have a ton of stories to tell. If the network makes a decision — which is not our decision, obviously — that it’s time to wrap the show up, we want to do it in a way that’s very respectful to the show and gives the fans something they want. We’re not thinking about that right now. We’re thinking about the stories we have to tell in the first half of the season. And I would hope that if we did wrap it up, we can be involved in that decision on how to do it. We’re hoping that it’s more than one season away.

Bones returns Thursday, Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. on Fox.