In the final season of Paramount+’s SEAL Team, Special Operations Commander Jason Hayes (David Boreanaz) and the Navy SEALs’ elite BRAVO unit fight their way out of a difficult situation and back into combat. A serious brain injury and a new team member change the dynamic and cause some potentially deadly distractions. When you’re working on dangerous, high-risk missions, you have to keep your head in the game, work as a cohesive team, and not let guilt get the best of you, or war could have the final word.
In this exclusive interview with Collider, showrunner Spencer Hudnut shares what it was like to find out that Season 7 would be their last, and how they’re adjusting to the series’ conclusion. He talks about wanting closure for the characters, why he brought Drew (Beau Knapp) into the season, what it means for the Ross Curtis (Mac Brandt) storyline, the biggest production challenge with the ending, getting the action scenes done, the emotion of saying goodbye, and how he wishes he could do spinoffs. He’s still trying to figure out what happens next, now that SEAL Team is over.
Collider: When I spoke to David Boreanaz at the beginning of the season, he told me that this would be his last season, even though it wasn’t the last season of the show. When did he talk to you? Was there ever any conversation about continuing the show after he left?
SPENCER HUDNUT: The short answer is that he and I never had that conversation. I found out in November that this would be the last season. I understand why he could have made that decision on his own. But the truth is, I started breaking down Season 7 in January 2023. The writers came in February and March. Before the strike, we were breaking down the entire season and we probably had about seven scripts in the works. We came back in early October, we basically had nine scripts done, and I started tinkering with the season finale. And then when I was told in early November that it was the series finale, we were only five weeks away from starting production. I lost all the writers for five weeks and we were locked down to go to Colombia. So that really only gave me about three parts of the finale to land the plane.
Of course, I know that BRAVO Team has been around for a long time. With Season 7, it was unlikely that anyone would continue forward, so the main characters were already on their way out. My goal is to have more seasons. That’s why we introduced Drew. I got a lot of messages on social media about, “Why would you introduce a character when you only have 10 episodes left?” Drew is there to be a bridge character, like Omar, in case the reins need to be passed to the next generation of BRAVO Team, to really build those guys up as the season goes on, to the point where people actually care about those guys, in case they take on a more prominent role. While I never wanted to do a SEAL Team episode without David, part of the job is to keep the show going. That’s a challenge that I thought we’d face, but we didn’t.
At the same time, it feels like this is a world where you can tell more stories, even if it’s not the same as this particular show. Have you thought about, discussed, or considered any spinoffs with any of these characters?
HUDNUT: Yeah, definitely. Of course, we want to entertain and give the audience an action-packed show, but one of the things we do really well is focus on areas where we can do better for our men and women in uniform and our veterans. We’ve talked about spinoffs. If you asked me a year ago, I would have said there would probably be a SEAL Team-related show or two in the works right now, but for whatever reason, that hasn’t happened.
Honestly, not much has changed since that news broke. This is the seventh season of a TV show. I think the show could have ended, at the end of Season 4, so I always want to end each season in a place where we feel like we can give closure to our characters, but at the same time, leave room for more stories to be told. Between Jason, Ray, Sonny, and Davis, for the most part, I don’t have them all get to where they’re at in this finale, but they all have the same journey. For Jason, it’s really about using the downtime as a way to start to put the shame in the back of his head that comes from his first kill. That’s always been his journey. We had to cut short the distance he’s come. He would never have gone as far as he does now.
