Bones: What The Number 447 Really Means

Fans of the popular procedural series "Bones" know that, throughout the series, the number 447 just kept popping up over and over and over again. Whether it appears as a time on clocks, room numbers, or just in the background of a scene — a trend that started in earnest in the show's fourth season — 447 is as important to "Bones" as "the numbers" (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42) were to "Lost." But what do they mean? Well, in the show's 12th and final season, the Jeffersonian Institute — where Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her team work as forensic scientists and anthropologists to solve cold cases alongside FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) — blows up, and in the "Bones" series finale "The End in the End," the show reveals that the explosion took place at 4:47.

"We came up with [our take] pretty near the beginning of the season," showrunner Michael Peterson told TVInsider after the finale aired in the spring of 2017. "Hart [Hanson, the show's creator] had a smart idea [...] He told us what it was, but we couldn't write it as well as he could, and he couldn't write the finale. We knew it was something he could deliver if he wrote it, but it felt like it would be a cheap trick without him. It was such a personal thing that we tried multiple versions and it didn't quite work. We had to write the best version we could."

"All of these images of 447, they've been harbingers of this moment to come," Peterson told the outlet. "It's the moment when their lives shifted for one last time. That's what this season was about. It really is the moment that each of them survived and moved on from the journeys they've been on since the very first episode."

On a very literal level, the "meaning" of 447 does obvious center around the explosion at the Jeffersonian, but as Michael Peterson told TVLine in a separate interview, the creative team behind "Bones" was wholly split on what the numbers could mean. After Michael Ausiello asked about 447 and admitted he was still "a little confused," Peterson responded, "Some people will consider it a resolution. There is probably more to tell even. We talked to [series creator] Hart Hanson and [former showrunner] Stephen [Nathan] and everyone had a different view of what '447' could be. For me and [co-showrunner] John Collier, that was meant to be the resolution."

Pressed by Ausiello — who asked if Gerardo Celasco's antagonist Mark Kovac fiddled with clocks or something to make the explosion happen at that time, Peterson clarified, saying that there's a deeper meaning still for this ever-present number. "No, absolutely not," Peterson said. "The way '447' worked for us was in more of a supernatural way — a harbinger or omen, signaling a redefining moment for Booth and Brennan. It's just something that has been there all along that has been building to this moment of saying, 'Booth and Brennan, [your] life is going to change one more time.'" This is a pretty cool explanation, all things considered ... but apparently, an off-the-cuff remark made by one of the show's stars helped contribute to the whole 447 mystery too.

The funniest part of this whole thing, if I'm being honest, is that if you put all the 447 lore aside, the whole reason the Jeffersonian exploded in the first place was because David Boreanaz made a joke about hating the set in "Bones" season 1. As Hart Hanson explained after the series finale aired, Boreanaz just thought the lab set sort of sucked, which fit with his character, so Hanson made a promise that would come to fruition years later. Asked how long he knew he'd blow up the Jeffersonian by the end of the show, Hansen responded, "A while actually. In season 1, David Boreanaz, the human being, hated the lab set; he hated working on it, he didn't like it, and part of that is his sense of things, just who he is. The other part was that it wasn't Booth's place, if you know what I mean. The character of Booth was the funky retro guy, and the lab was the opposite of that, so both the actor and much more importantly the character didn't like the lab."

Then, one fateful day during season 1, Hanson and Boreanaz were hanging out on set when the actor made a crack about the set. "David and I were standing beside Craft Services and he said — and by the way, this is within the first few episodes — he said, 'I want to blow up this lab,'" Hanson recalled. "And I said, "If we last long enough and have warning, in the final episode we will destroy the lab," and that made him very happy. Little did he know 12 years later..."

"Bones" is currently streaming on Hulu.