Give Me My Remote Bones BONES: Stephen Nathan on Why They Opted for the Wendell Twist

BONES: Stephen Nathan on Why They Opted for the Wendell Twist

[Major spoiler alert: This post contains big spoilers for the BONES episode “Big in the Philippines.” If you have not seen the hour, please go watch that first, and then come back to this post.]

BONES has had its fair share of sad storylines, but tonight’s reveal that Wendell has cancer — and a very often fatal kind of bone cancer at that — is up there as one of the most heartbreaking moves the show has done. And while viewers may be a little down that the show chose to go down this path with Wendell, BONES boss Stephen Nathan told me this was the only character they seriously discussed making sick.

“You know, we wanted it to be someone who was also close with Booth,” Nathan pointed out. “And Booth’s relationship with Wendell is natural; they play hockey together. It would impact Brennan and Booth in very, very personal ways.”

And now that Wendell has opted to stay and fight the cancer, this won’t be the last we see of the storyline this season.

“We’re going to see him at least one more time this year, and we’re going to see his situation progress,” Nathan said. “Not only the treatment, but the disease. But as we saw at the end of the episode, we saw he made the decision to fight it, which was a very difficult decision. His story will continue. It probably won’t be resolved this year.”

Viewers may be pulling for the eventual resolution to be a positive one, but Nathan acknowledged that they haven’t decided, completely, how this story will play out.

“How it eventually resolves is still up in the air, but we know what we want this to mean for Wendell,” he said. “We know where it’s going, but the ultimate resolution of that is still up in the air.”

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What did you think of “Big in the Philippines”?