Dr. Jack Stanley Hodgins is an entomologist, botanist, and mineralogist who works at the Jeffersonian Institute. He is not only an expert on spores and minerals, but conspiracy theories are his hobby. He can estimate time of death from the development of insect larvae in human and animal remains. Booth calls him "Bug Boy" and at the beginning he doesn't like it but he comes to it.
Hodgins: I'll tell you this. If Epps comes near Angela, I'll kill him.
He is portrayed by T.J. Thyne.
Brief Character History
Hodgins is one of the more sarcastic members of the group. He seems to have had a strong dislike for Dr. Goodman's (the administrator of the Jeffersonian Institution) approach to his work, but gets along much better with Cam, the head of forensics. He is sometimes "the funny man" with a notable impression of Booth (David Boreanaz) in "The Woman in the Garden". He is one of the more normal people working in the lab, and helps teach Zack how to appropriately socialize.
His family is extremely wealthy – and happens to be the single largest donor to the Jeffersonian Institution; they own the Cantilever Group, the third largest privately owned corporation in the United States, and Jack is their sole heir. It is said that "The Cantilever Group itself generates more GNP than Europe" although this is probably a hyperbole as Europe generates trillions in GNP .Hodgins avoids a Jeffersonian Institution "meet & greet" event for donors because he wants to avoid meeting his family and/or Cantilever Group executives in this setting. He is trying to avoid having his coworkers find out about his wealth. He wants them to respect him for his contributions and not fear him because technically he could be considered their boss.
Booth, Zack and Angela knew about his family, but respected his wishes to keep it from Brennan. However, as of "Aliens in a Spaceship", Hodgins tells Brennan that his family is rich. In the episode "Two Bodies in the Lab" he is shown driving a Mini Cooper, which is also his car in later episodes. He also receives a car as a gift from his father-in-law in season five. In the first season episode "The Man with the Bone" it is also revealed Hodgins is an experienced cave diver. He is also seen in many episodes with an iPhone as his mobile device.
Hodgins abandons his paranoid thoughts and beliefs after it was revealed his best friend, Zack Addy was aiding an aptly named cannibalistic serial killer The Gormogon (which later was revealed to actually be named, "The Master"). Overwhelmingly devastated by his best friend's poor judgment and as well as his recent break up with Angela (see: Relationship with Angela Montenegro), Hodgins' beliefs and feelings of paranoia turned into misanthropy. He explains he "hates everybody" in a session he scheduled with Sweets after being repeatedly confronted by Sweets while working in the lab in The Finger in the Nest. After assuming he'd have to be heavily medicated and undergo an endless stream of therapy, Sweets assures Hodgins he will be fine becoming misanthropic. Sweets explains Hodgins is coping from the amount of turmoil recently evident in his life. The feelings of hatred toward everybody was the conversion result from the paranoia. Once Hodgins' coping mechanism progresses, his misanthropic feelings will eventually turn into something much nicer. He shows he had accepted the fact they were with Booth when Agent Perotta says : "My people were right". Cam and Carolyn asked : "Your people?". Hodgins and Wendell Bray, a graduate assistant, stated : "We're Booth's people."
In the fourth season episode "The Science in the Physicist", Hodgins, after learning Angela's father is in town, wakes up in the middle of the desert, with a bandage on his left shoulder. After removing it, it is revealed he received a tattoo of Angela's face, with "Angie Forever" written underneath. Watchers are lead to believe it was done by Angela's father as a form of passive-aggressive 'revenge' for hurting Angela. Later, in "The Cinderella in the Cardboard", it is revealed he has been using an online dating service called Date or Hate. He claims he is looking for a "meaningful connection".
In "The X in the File" (season 5), Hodgins visits Sweets for counseling after Angela and Wendell admit their relationship (he enjoys pretending to blow up his co-workers' heads, particularly Angela and Wendell). Sweets comes to the conclusion that Hodgins is grieving for his and Angela's lost relationship. Hodgins exclaims that the only remedy for grief is time ("unless you're (Sweets) prescibing a whole lot of alcohol"), which Sweets confirms.
In the season six episode, "The Body in the Bag", he states that the house that he & Angela are currently living in has been in the family since his great grandfather - Chester Putnam Hodgins. However, after that investigation, he buys the house of the crime scene from its current owner - Paisley Johnston - at "a greatly reduced price" since she didn't like the fact that a murder occurred in her home.
Later into season 8, Hodgins loses his money due to the machinations of killer and hacker Christopher Pelant, who hacked Hodgins' accounts while using the same computer system to target a military drone at a school in Afghanistan, forcing Hodgins to sacrifice his money by allowing the computer to keep running so that the team could focus their efforts on hacking the drone and stopping the destruction of the school. In The Maiden in the Mushrooms, after using the last of Finn's late grandma's hot sauce, Hodgins figures out the ingredients, and opens a side business called "Opie and Thurston's Hot Sauce".
In season 9, the episode "The Heiress in the Hill", Hodgins learns that he has a mentally ill older brother, Jeffrey Hodgins, whom his parents had concealed from him. Jack Hodgins cares greatly for his brother and the two bond over Jules Verne and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" which their father read to both of them every night before bed. Hodgins needs to fund his brother's bills, since the Cantilever group money is gone. Brennan and Booth offer funds from Brennan's book advance, but Hodgins declines, preferring to take a loan like an ordinary person.
In season 10 in "The Eye in the Sky" Hodgins invents a packaging material and receives an advance of $2m, restoring him to the ranks of the wealthy. In "The Next in the Last", the team recovers Hodgins' money.
In the fall finale of season 11 A body blows up and the blast leaves Hodgins and Aubrey lying on the ground unconscious. They are both rushed to the hospital and Hodgins is considered fine by the doctors. He goes home with Angela and takes aspirin to relieve his pain. A few days later he and Angela are leaving the Jeffersonian and he collapses on to the floor. He is rushed to the hospital, later we find out that he has been paralyzed below the waist. Right before he collapsed he and Angela had decided to have another baby, but now they possibly can not.
Since he lost the feeling in his legs, his misanthropic feelings have returned and he started displaying anger and frustration at the loss of the feeling in his legs and his radically altered position with his other co-workers towards everyone, especially Angela.
Relationship with Angela Montenegro
While on the surface Angela rubs Jack the wrong way, he seems to secretly like her. Their first date (Second Season, The Girl with the Curl) was to the park, to play on swings. In Aliens in a Spaceship he admitted to Brennan that he was in love with Angela. Although not expressly stated, it has become increasingly clear that he and Angela are involved - at the very least as more than just friends. This is seen in the many moments between Hodgins and Angela in most of the episodes following their first date (The Girl with the Curl, The Man in the Mansion). In The Priest in the Churchyard, they "christen" a replica of Cleopatra's bed slated to be put on exhibit. Hodgins also asks her to move in with him. As of the episode Spaceman in a Crater, Hodgins has proposed to Angela twice, but even though she admits she loves him, she turns down his proposals because something doesn't "feel" right - although she appears to encourage him to continue trying to propose. Hodgins surprises Angela with a "Be My Love" proposal, and claims he loves their relationship just as it is ("The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House"). Angela is elated, and asks Hodgins to marry her immediately. He accepts, but their wedding is cut short when it is revealed that Angela was technically already married in an unknown man following a drunken one-night stand and wedding ceremony in Fiji.
In the third season Hodgins and Angela hire a private investigator named Amber Kippler to locate Angela's husband. The investigator finds that Angela's husband, Grayson Barasa, is living on No Name key in Florida. Hodgins and Angela ask Amber to force Grayson to the divorce papers. However, Grayson refuses to sign them, claiming he still loves Angela and has even built a house for himself and her. Hodgins is originally unnerved by this, but is consoled by Amber, who explains that she personally believes that Angela will stay with him.
In the 5th season they are arrested together, because Hodgins was "driving like an old lady." Thanks to old outstanding (misdemeanor) warrants, the arresting officer is unable to release them until the local judge speaks with them. After bonding in jail, they realize they shouldn't have broken up, and when the judge comes to free them, they get married in the jail cell.
On the last episode of Season 5, it was revealed that they were going to France for a year because they did not want to work without Brennan and Booth.
In The Pinocchio in the Planter, Hodgins tells Wendell Bray that while Wendell was going out with Angela he once planned Wendell's murder in great detail.
In the Season 6 Finale, The Change in the Game, Angela gives birth to Hodgin's son, a baby boy named Michael Staccato Vincent Hodgins; the unusual name was a compromise with Angela's father, who had wanted to name the child Staccao Mamba (after words he'd heard in a song), as well as a tribute to Vincent Nigel-Murray, who had recently been killed by Jacob Broadsky.
Family background
In The Heiress in the Hill, Jack's parents, Jonathan and Anne, are named by Dr. Lawrence Rozran, who also informs him that they had an elder son, Jeffrey, whom they never told him about.
Hodgins mentioned that his Uncle Preston wants to be buried standing up without a casket when the team was searching for the accomplice of Howard Epps.
Before he sold his house, Hodgins mentioned that his house belonged to his father, grand-father, and his great-grandfather. When Angela finally electronically tracks down the family fortune in Season Ten it is $4.6 billion.