Fox's Bones concludes its strike-shortened season tonight, wrapping up the series' first attempt at a serialized story line with the unveiling of the skeleton-collecting, cannibalistic Gormogon killer and his apprentice. We caught up with exec-producer Hart Hanson shortly after it was announced that, in the show's fourth season, it would break from it's Monday-night pairing with House, moving to Wednesdays in the fall and Fridays come January. While he's hopeful that the Friday-night placement, meant to help build other shows, won't happen, and accepted yet another schedule change, Hanson seemed to crave a little stability. ("I would like them to be tossing all their effort into making our show a huge hit instead of something between a huge hit and a cult hit," he said.) Still, Hanson talked to us about the finale and what went into the planning of this season, answering some PopWatch questions along the way. (Sorry, guys, no word on if/when David Boreanaz' Booth and Emily Deschanel's Bones will finally hook up.) Read Hanson's (spoiler-free) remarks below, and check back with us tomorrow, after the big reveal, to read more from Hanson on how they decided who the killer would be and what it could mean for the show next year.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When the identities of the Gormogon killer and his apprentice (which we at PopWatch know) are revealed, are you concerned about the fan reaction?
Hart Hanson: I'm counting on it. We're expecting a violent reaction. When you make a change to a beloved ensemble cast, it's a good thing and a bad thing. You lose someone but you've got to make changes and keep it alive. The kiss of death is to keep adding characters without making room for them because everyone is underserviced.

Given that you had to rejigger the end of the season, are you happy with the resolution?
I think it works. We'll find out how it works. If there hadn't been a strike, we would have had a few more Gormogon stories and it would not have played out exactly the way it did play out but the end result would have been the same. There would have been people gone because of the Gormogon. It just would have played out in different ways. Characters could have been killed for example. However, one of the things we've found out is that on our show, despite the murder and mayhem, we are fairly funny, and were we to kill people, beloved characters, for example, having our regular characters live with that would be more difficult than if they didn't die. So in that respect, it worked out just fine for the series.

Why wrap it up now instead of letting it unfurl in the next season?
We wanted to. I think the story wasn't worth keeping for an entire other season. You put your finger on one of the big conversations we had coming back from the strike, which is what do we jettison from this season and put in the next season? For example, we had some plans for Booth's personal life and some family. And we just did not want to shrink it down. We didn't want to do an attenuated season on that story. We let go of another story, the Gravedigger one, which is about a kidnapper [from season 2], that we will probably come back to in another season although it will have been so long that we have to reintroduce that storyline. And the Gormogon story we thought we can do this, it gives us a good solid season-ender.

Did you have concerns from the beginning about doing a season-long arc when the writers' strike was likely to happen and affect the TV season?
We had a lot of concerns. Not just the strike, although the strike was a huge issue right from the beginning of the third season. I think we are at our most successful when the serial stories are the character stories. Beats where the characters progress but basically we solve one crime per episode, so it's very episodic. For us, a serial story is sort of a reward for our dedicated viewers. Not a way to get new viewers in. It's nice for the people who've invested time in the show to feel like they're getting an enhanced experience. That's sort of what the Gormogon story was designed to be. And we thought, oh, we can do this in one season. When we started thinking, "What about the strike?" it was more a case of okay, let's continue optimistically. Lets not start designing our season dependent on a strike because if it doesn't happen we'll be sparse. So we planned for a good full season and then adjusted for the difficulties of the strike instead of the other way around.

In the wake of this season, how much will the often-lauded chemistry between the characters drive the show forward?
I was just talking to David about this the other day. He constantly agitates for less procedure and more character moments. And I keep telling him, in my view, we have to balance them because we cannot become a soap opera. We have to solve a crime, an interesting crime, which gives us the ability to go off on tangents and have the characters in comic moments. And that's a constant balancing game for us and we talk about it all the time. Are we leaning too far one way or another? Yes, I agree with David that the chemistry, and characters and comedy are, I think, what keep people coming back for more, but if we get too self-indulgent with that, we will end up with one of the soft shows that loses viewers over time instead of keeping them coming back. But your guess is as good as mine because it's an ongoing process. Let me know how you think we're doing.