Watch or Skip: ‘SEAL Team’ Season 7 on Paramount+, The Final Mission for the David Boreanaz-Led Military Drama
When SEAL Team returns to Paramount+ for its seventh and final season, it comes shortly after David Boreanaz’s Commander Jason Hayes turned down the Navy Seals at the end of Season 6, in protest of the deteriorating mental health of him and his fellow special operations forces. Demoted to crappy jobs and shore duty as the command punishes the team instead of addressing the issues, Hayes and Bravo are left fighting a war of attrition as their time on the teams and the show itself begins to come to an end. Boreanaz, Neil Brown Jr., AJ Buckley, Raffi Barsoumian, Toni Trucks, Alona Tal, and Jessica Paré all return for SEAL Team’s final deployment this season; Beau Knapp and Dylan Walsh join the cast.
SEAL TEAM – SEAL 7: WATCH ONLINE OR SKIP?
Opening scene: “These tadpoles don’t know how easy life is, compared to what we’ve done before.” Commanding Officer Jason Hayes (Boreanaz) is running a training operation for a group of promising young SEALs who are struggling to pull their Zodiac boat off the beach.
Key takeaway: “Like you taught me how to be a master. Always improving my fighting stance.” It was a moment of true unity at the end of SEAL Team season 6, when Ray Perry (Brown Jr.) and the rest of Bravo Team united behind Jason Hayes and his defiant stance against brain injuries associated with sustained combat operations. But a few months later, they all found themselves in different dog houses with soldiers. Commander Blackburn (Judd Lormand), DEVGRU’s executive officer, and Captain Walch (Walsh), the team’s new commanding officer, are at odds with Hayes after a poor Navy Cross performance. The Navy also has Sonny Quinn (Buckley) and Omar Hamza (Barsoumian) fighting a “war on poop” as they clean dog cages. And Ray is in the weeks leading up to his retirement as an administrative assistant while he plans to expand the veterans treatment center he founded with his wife Naima (Parisa Fakhri). Life ashore has some benefits for Bravo Team. Hayes gets to spend more time with his son, daughter, and fiancée, and he’s working with Mandy Ellis (Paré). Sonny spends time with his young daughter and helps out Stella (Tal), Clay’s widow. (Max Thieriot’s Bravo Team member was killed last season.) Sparks can also continue to fly between Sonny and DEVGRU intelligence officer Lisa Davis (Trucks), whose career is still in flux. (She’s developing an “integrated deterrence strategy,” in which SEALs work with foreign national partners, but is also getting pushback on that.) For the most part, though, the team is in complaining mode. The Navy continues to dismiss the warfighter’s health issues, and they’re frustrated when other operators get deployment orders.
That all changes with a trip to Sweden. Assigned to a month-long training mission for that country’s special operations teams, Bravo is cooling their heels in Umeå, unhappy about being paired with a brash, unpopular SEAL named Drew Franklin (Knapp), when their situation suddenly heats up. They’re back in the field. But they’re not getting any younger, and they’re still hurting from recent beatings. Jason Hayes and Bravo Team will have to work to improve their fighting position once again.
What shows will it remind you of? When Max Thieriot was written out of the show in season 6, some on SEAL Team fan forums hated the move, calling Theriot’s Clay Spenser the heart and soul of the show. But with Clay’s status as a fallen operator memorialized on the wall of the team’s favorite local bar, Theriot can continue to focus on Fire Country, the show he starred in and co-created, which returns to CBS for a third season in October. (Fire Country has also begun streaming on Netflix.) Our take: SEAL Team has had an impressive seven seasons, all the while surviving the departure of fan-favorite Thieriot and the move from CBS to Paramount+. But let’s face it. While the average real-life Navy SEAL is in his 30s, David Boreanaz is 55, which poses a problem for a series that thrives on its Master Chief leading Bravo Team in the field. SEAL Team has always prided itself on its authenticity, with military veterans working on the show in various capacities. As Boreanaz and the other actors who play his team age out of their roles—Neil Brown Jr. and AJ Buckley are both in their 40s—hanging up their tactical vests, untying their harnesses, and wearing their combat fatigues, Boreanaz has become a bit of a problem.
