Lance Sweets

Lance Sweets, Ph.D., Psy.D., is a fictional character in the American television series Bones. He was portrayed by John Francis Daley.

Daley first made three guest appearances as Sweets during the first eight episodes of Season 3, first appearing in "The Secret in the Soil". He was promoted to a series regular and appeared in the opening credits beginning with the episode "The Santa in the Slush". He also guest-starred on the spin-off The Finder. The character is killed off in the first episode of the show's tenth season, "The Conspiracy in the Corpse", making him the first main character of Bones to die.

Background

Little is revealed about Sweets' birth parents. In "Double Trouble In The Panhandle", Sweets reveals that his birth mother was a psychic working in a circus in South Florida; upon reaching the age of majority he attempted to track her down, but could gain no information from the insular circus community. Before being adopted he was in foster care. He lived in four foster homes by the time he was adopted at age six by the Finleys. He mentioned that he was beaten by a foster dad "for sport" and the whip scars are still visible on his back. His loving, but elderly, adoptive parents died shortly before Dr. Sweets began working with Booth and Brennan, leaving him without a family. Sweets' relationship with his adoptive parents, however, left him with the belief that broken people can be saved by people with good hearts, inspiring him to become a psychologist. Most of this was uncovered by Dr. (now Chef) Gordon Wyatt in reading Sweets' manuscript on Booth and Brennan's working relationship, stating that works like his often reveal more about the writer than the subject matter. He correctly deduces that Sweets was adopted as a child and suffered some sort of abuse. Details about his life as a teenager are few; but the episode "Mayhem on a Cross" reveals that he had been a fan of death metal as a teenager, which he still listens to after a bad day.