It’s never been an easy day for a SEAL Team showrunner.
Speaking with TVLine ahead of the series’ finale this Sunday on Paramount+, SEAL Team showrunner Spencer Hudnut detailed how, when the news of the “final season” broke, in November 2023, he was nearly finished writing Season 7. Several “tweaks,” including a new fate for a major character, quickly followed.
“When we broke this season, at the point where it was 90 percent written, I had no clue that this was going to be the last one,” Hudnut shared as part of our in-depth Q&A, which was published Sunday. “It wasn’t until very late in the process that I realized this was the end, and I really only had three acts of the finale to ‘land the plane.’” Fortunately, the first part of Season 7 set many of the main characters—David Boreanaz’s Jason, Neil Brown Jr.’s Ray, AJ Buckley’s Sonny, and Toni Trucks’ Lisa—on what were certainly life-changing trajectories. So Hudnut and his writers simply committed to the season and effectively ended those arcs on schedule—or, in at least one case, changed a character’s fate.
Jason, Ray, and the others “are definitely ‘past third base’ in their stories and careers, so we didn’t have to adjust too much…,” Hudnut says. “But certainly for Jason, it’s a different ending than where I was planning to be at the beginning of the season.”
