How can Bravo move forward after that?!
In the SEAL Team Season 6 finale, Bravo returned home, but not in time for Clay’s (Max Thieriot) funeral (though they did visit his grave). And Jason (David Boreanaz) received his Navy Cross, and in doing so, he spoke publicly about his TBI and Clay’s work to change the military’s perception of them. “I don’t know if being honest will change anything, but if it saves the next person, then maybe I’ll be a different kind of hero, like my brother Clay Spenser,” he said.
The finale ended with Jason facing orders and being shipped out, and he was joined by Ray (Neil Brown Jr.), the rest of Bravo, and other SEALs voicing their own struggles. Showrunner Spencer Hudnut discusses where the show goes from there if it gets renewed for Season 7. You’re right: I definitely need to see what comes next!
Spencer Hudnut: We definitely put Bravo in a different position in terms of how they’re going to get out of this situation? Like I said, it’s very different from how we ended Season 5. They’re in danger again but most importantly, they’re united, and when Bravo stands up for each other, they usually get out of these situations. I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
Talk about getting Jason to the point where he accepts that medal and talks about his TBI.
That journey started in Season 5 and there were a lot of clues throughout the season that led him to this point. First and foremost, the idea that he brought up—because of the attitude of the command toward TBI and operators with TBI, he actually had to turn his head and look behind him in a way that he wasn’t comfortable with as someone who was responsible for looking behind his teammates. [There was] this idea of understanding that other operators were dealing with this and he really didn’t want to see other people go through what he went through. As Blackburn [Judd Lormand] says, it was really the ultimate sheeple act. He wasn’t just doing this for his Bravo teammates, he was doing it for all of these operators under command. If you go back to the conversation he had with Mandy [Jessica Paré], if you go back to the conversation he had with Omar [Raffi Barsoumian], when he told Omar about his TBI and Omar’s reaction, you think that you’re special, a lot of people are dealing with this, obviously hearing about Clay’s plan to pick up the baton and continue this fight and even that conversation with Stella [Alona Tal], it all just points him in this direction to make that choice.
It also really speaks to how far he’s come in his family life. He knows the consequences of this situation, and I think for the first time, he’s really comfortable with the idea that maybe he won’t have surgery again. It’s really a testament to where he stands with Mandy, but also all the hard work he’s put into himself, not just in terms of TBI, but also putting Jason Hayes first. And so it’s a big step for Jason and obviously it’s going to have big consequences.
It’s a relief. He’s really uncomfortable with having to almost put himself first in a way that hides and protects himself, not protecting his brothers. And so I think he’s at peace. The scene where he goes to the beach, there’s a peace to Jason that I don’t think we’ve seen before. When he stands before the commander, he’s ready to take his punishment, and it’s obviously a surprise to him that his brothers come and protect him and they’re not going to make it easy on orders.
When did you decide that that was going to be how you ended the season?
We knew that Jason was always going to have to reveal this TBI secret at some point, and the idea of him almost sacrificing himself for the greater good of the other operators was something we liked. Because of everything he’s done for his brothers, giving that back to him just felt like a really powerful moment.
What we were doing a little bit with Jason when we talked about TBI and these guys taking command and throwing it in their faces was tapping into [the fact that] there’s a little bit of these operators going rogue that’s always been a part of the SEAL community. These guys have this kind of rogue warrior mentality. So there’s a little bit of that at the end of this, about these guys taking command and “we’re not going to make this easy for you.”
An additional element of that scene that made it even more powerful for those of us who were there when we did it was that the people who came in who weren’t part of Bravo were actually veterans. It just made it a little bit more powerful when the veterans involved in our show actually wanted to speak up about the idea.
