SEAL Team XL Season Finale Recap: Can ‘Die Hard in a Swedish Mall’ Save Bravo’s Bacon?
Bravo Team is in hot water as Paramount+’s SEAL Team kicks off its final season on Sunday. But by the end of the season’s premiere, will their impromptu heroics earn them a return to the battlefield?
The Season 7 premiere finds Bravo on shore leave for months, following the humiliation 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 helped the former move into a new place with Brad.
Meanwhile, Lisa is tasked with reading to some of her colleagues about the growing importance of integrated deterrence strategies, but she faces resistance—particularly from a 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 Trident in exchange for his teammates staying. Bravo is instead sent to Sweden to train some SOGs (Swedish Special Operations Groups)—and an unfit 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 around. Once there, Jason and his teammates learn that Drew has a side job, training SOGs (pretending that Rambo’s moves are nonstandard SEAL tactics). Jason sets the ground rules and forces Drew to contribute some of his krona to the team’s 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 scout 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 abruptly tend to the wounded, while he, Sonny, Drew, Brock, and Pepper sneak into 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 any gunmen. 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, then he, Brock, and Pepper take out a third gunman. Meanwhile, 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 the store. Jason wrestles the man to the ground and a lengthy melee ensues, with Jason slashing 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 gunman finally shoots him out through the door. But Drew takes him out from across the street with a 40-yard pistol shot.
Omar and Ray are busy outside the entire time, 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 the way! Omar, Ray, Sonny, and Brock arrive quickly forming a “force field” of cars/trucks around the long line of wounded civilians, then using their collected rifles to take out the drivers. They then push a final car into the path of the VBIED, preventing the explosion from reaching the wounded.
News of Bravo’s heroism spreads home, interrupting Lisa’s latest spat with Kirkpatrick and his gang. Alas, Jason and his crew are not ordered back to combat, but are instead called home to resume shore duty. On the way back, Drew is still a little upset, but surprises Sonny by giving him one of the beautiful “Swedish” watches he coveted (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 making him question his future in new ways.
Elsewhere, Sonny shows up at the hearing of Ben, the veteran Clay helped when he was injured by a mall cop.
