SEAL Team XL Season 1 Finale Recap: Can ‘Die Hard in a Swedish Mall’ Save Bravo’s Bacon?
Bravo Team was struggling when Paramount+’s SEAL Team kicked off its final season on Sunday. But by the end of the second season’s premiere, will their impromptu heroics earn them a return to the battlefield?
The Season 7 premiere picks up with Bravo in the months since he was forced to do shore leave, after embarrassing Command at the end of Season 6. Ray is pushing paperwork for DEVGRU. Sonny is helping Stella with Brian. And Jason has snuck across the country to spend some quality time with Emma and Mikey, and help the former move into a new place with Brad.
Lisa has been assigned to read to some of her colleagues about the growing importance of integrated deterrence strategies, but she meets resistance—namely from Lt. Col. Kirkpatrick, who questions her experience, among other things.
Bravo is restless, so Jason confronts Captain Walch (Dylan Walsh) and offers to give up his Trident in exchange for his teammates staying on the job. Bravo is instead sent to Sweden to train some SOGs (Swedish Special Operations Groups)—and an unsuitable toy named Drew Franklin (Beau Knapp) is assigned to join them.
En route to Sweden, Bravo tries his best to recruit Drew, but he sees them as a problem that Command wants to keep on the shelf. Once there, Jason and his teammates learn that Drew has a side job, training SOGs (pretending that Rambo moves are nonstandard SEAL tactics). Jason lays down the law and forces Drew to contribute some of his krona to a team outing. There, at a local coffee shop, Sonny and Drew begin to butt heads when an explosion rocks the neighborhood. Bravo springs into action to investigate the scene, finding evidence of a car bomb just as they hear AK gunfire echoing inside a nearby mall.
Episode 2 of the final season begins with Jason assigning Ray and Omar to quickly and dramatically tend to the wounded, while he, Sonny, Drew, Brock, and Pepper enter the mall unarmed, to at least assess the situation. When the local police arrive, Ray reports to Jason that the Swedes want to wait for their tactical operations team. Jason, Sonny, Drew, and Brock then set out to get the errant shoppers to safety, while checking for gunmen on hand. Desperate for any firepower, they assign Pepper to a gunman and then take him out with a headshot after retrieving his pistol. Then Sonny takes out another gunman from an escalator with a purchased AK, and then he, Brock, and Pepper take out a third gunman.
Jason comes across a wounded merchant and ducks into a store to find the man’s hiding children. Jason hides the children behind a partition as a fourth gunman arrives to clear out the store. Jason wrestles the man to the ground and a lengthy melee ensues, with Jason slashing at him with a knife. It’s still a fairly even fight, however, until Jason corners the man and slits his throat with the blade. As the car crashes to the floor in a pool of blood, Jason is visibly shocked — so much so that he doesn’t notice his six shots as the final gunman is about to take him out through the doorway. But Drew takes the guy out from across the street with a 40-yard pistol shot.
Omar and Ray are kept busy outside the entire time, with Omar doing his best to save both a critically injured mother and her young daughter (though only the child survives). Meanwhile, Ray contacts the Swedes, learning from a gunman’s radio that a car bomb is on its way! Omar, Ray, and a Sonny and Brock quickly form a “force field” of cars/trucks around the long line of wounded civilians, then use their scavenged rifles to take out the driver. Then, by pushing a final car into the path of the VBIED, they prevent the explosion from reaching the wounded.
News of Bravo’s heroism spreads home, interrupting Lisa’s latest spat with Kirkpatrick and co. Alas, Jason and his crew are not ordered back into combat, but are called home to resume menial shore duty. On the way back, Drew is still a bit grumpy, but surprises Sonny by giving him one of his coveted “Swedish” watches (taken from the mall). And back home, Jason finally confides in Mandy that being suddenly thrust back into combat has left him a little confused and made him question his future in new ways.
