Why Did Max Thieriot Leave ‘SEAL Team’?
Viewers were shocked when Clay Spenser was abruptly killed off in the second half of SEAL Team’s sixth season. Max Thieriot’s character had been with the CBS-turned-Paramount+ series from the start and was as much a part of Bravo Team as anyone else. But that all changed when Thieriot began balancing his work on SEAL Team with the new CBS/Paramount+ series Fire Country. However, it turns out that trying to manage two first responder/military dramas at once, especially ones with multiple episodes, can’t last forever. Eventually, one of those shows had to go.
Clay Spenser Had a Tough Time on ‘SEAL Team’ Season 6
At the end of SEAL Team’s fifth season, Clay was nearly killed during a mission after being hit by an RPG. All of this comes after Clay makes the difficult decision to retire from Bravo Team after this “final mission” to be closer to his family. The season ends with fans wondering if Thieriot will leave the show mid-season, with no end in sight for Clay’s five seasons. This is a common trope in television shows and could easily have happened on SEAL Team. Fortunately, that’s not the case, but Clay’s arc in Season 6 is just as tragic.
The new season begins with Clay losing his leg and being forced into retirement. Throughout Season 6, Clay struggles to put his life back together after his final mission and nurtures his relationship with his wife Stella (Alona Tal) and son Ben. In fact, by the end of his time on SEAL Team, he and Stella even make plans to leave their old lives behind and start over. Along the way, Clay spends his final moments helping a veteran named Ben (Joey Pollari) in the episode “Aces and Eights,” where he stops the grieving veteran from committing suicide and vandalizing a recruiting center.
Although Clay saves Ben from committing suicide, he is found holding Ben’s gun by a security guard, who shoots him in the chest. These are the last moments of Clay we see on the show, as he, like Chris Kyle (the real-life inspiration behind American Sniper) before him, uses his final moments to save another person’s life. Ironically, Clay was once called “American Sniper” by one of Stella’s friends as early as Season 1’s “Collapse,” foreshadowing this terrible tragedy.
During SEAL Team Season 6, Thieriot was also working on another ongoing CBS/Paramount+ drama, Fire Country, in which he plays convicted firefighter Bode Donovon (aka Bode Leone) who is forced to return to his hometown (and family) to fight fires for freedom. “At that point, I was fully involved in SEAL Team, so it was hard to imagine doing anything else, especially since it was happening so quickly,” Thieriot told Collider in an exclusive interview. “It was clear that SEAL Team wasn’t going to end and this was the next thing I could do, so I wasn’t really sure.”
Unfortunately, that changed somewhere along the line, as both Fire Country and SEAL Team were renewed for their second and seventh seasons. Since Thieriot’s character on SEAL Team was all but written off after Season 5, his eventual demise the following season wasn’t a surprise. Given Fire Country’s massive workload—22 episodes a season compared to SEAL Team’s 12—it’s no surprise that Thieriot decided to stick around for the new series he helped co-create from the start. Fire Country is Max Thieriot’s show in many ways, and that’s all thanks to his SEAL Team co-stars. “Everything really picked up at the end of Season 5,” SEAL Team showrunner Spencer Hudnut told TV Insider. “There was some question about whether Max would be back for Season 6, so the cliffhanger ending of Season 5 [in Mali] was a little bit dominated by that. And as Fire Country kept passing each development check, it became more and more clear that there was a real possibility that we would lose Max at some point… People were talking about him being able to do both shows, but it was very clear that wasn’t the case.” With Fire Country shooting in Vancouver, Canada, and SEAL Team in Los Angeles and other locations across Southern California, Thieriot couldn’t do both.
Thieriot not only stars in Fire Country, he’s also an executive producer, co-creator, and the original inspiration for the series. “I was driving to work one day with my friend A.J. Buckley from SEAL Team, and we were sitting there talking back and forth,” Thieriot told James Corden on The Late Late Show. “… And I started telling him about [my experience growing up in the firefighting community], and he was like, ‘Dude, this is a show.’ I was like, ‘You think so?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.'” Thieriot further explained.ing, I wasn’t sure what the route was going to be,” Thieriot explained to Collider. “In the beginning, my intentions were to try to create this world and pitch it, and then have them make a show, best case scenario. ” Thieriot co-wrote the pilot alongside Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, and will later direct the 21st episode, “Backfire.” He had previously directed two episodes of SEAL Team during the show’s fourth and fourth seasons. But in many ways, Fire Country was the project that Thieriot had been waiting to undertake his entire career, and it only took someone like his SEAL Team co-star (Buckley is also a co-producer on Thieriot’s new series) to push him to make it a reality.
