In the finale, after Jason Hayes (David Boreanaz) and Team Bravo’s successful mission, the unit is deployed to Afghanistan for one final mission. Jason deals with his internal conflict and finds some peace when he, Ray Perry (Neil Brown Jr.), and Sonny Quinn (AJ Buckley) take a side trip to see the wife of the first person Jason killed. They encounter enemy fire when driving away from the village… the episode then cuts to Emma’s wedding (they survived the mission!) and Jason walks her down the aisle.
Sonny leaves Bravo and supports Davis (Toni Trucks), who secures her promotion. Meanwhile, Ray takes the Head of Warfighter Health position. In the final scene, Jason is in the chopper with the younger members of the SEAL crew and says “Easy f—ing day!”
Is SEAL Team Over After Season 7?
Could the show continue for another season? In an October interview with TVLine, SEAL Team showrunner Spencer Hudnut gave some insight into what Season 8 might have looked like if the show continued. Hudnut shared that since the show’s move to Paramount+, he wanted to wrap up every season “in a place where we’d be happy to leave the characters, where they feel like they’ve made some progress or feel settled.”
The showrunner explained that he had to rework some things for the series finale, especially when it came to Jason’s story. “I will say that when we broke this season, at the point it was 90% written, I did not have an inkling that this would be the last one. So, it really wasn’t until very late in the process that I realized this was going to be it, and I really only had three acts of the final episode to ‘land the plane,'” he said.
Hudnut added, “Now, they were definitely rounding third base in their stories and their careers, so we didn’t have to do too much rejiggering. But certainly for Jason, it was a different ending than what I intended at the outset of the season.”
He teased a bit of what the show might have been beyond Season 7 if it continued. “That was going to be largely dictated by the contractual things you run into when you get to an end of a Season 7, the actors who have to come to a decision… But when I originally broke this season, the end of the season was Jason and Mandy arriving in Afghanistan to go on this journey, this road to atonement for Jason, which we had to then kind of cram into the episode in a different way,” he explained.
Hudnut shared, “My hope was to set them off on a path where Jason was on the road to figure out a way to forgive himself, and wipe the stains of war off of him, but also land in a place where we could get them into trouble to start a potential Season 8 in a really big way.”
For Jason’s story, Hudnut said he knew they would explore the “shame” the character felt, but given the shorter timeline for storytelling, it had to be resolved rather quickly. “We knew we were going to get into that with Jason,” he said. “We just didn’t know that we were going to maybe tie it up — not with a bow, definitely — but that we would have to tie it up so quickly.”
He noted, “A lot of the work he’s done over the last few seasons allows him to get to the where he gets to at the end, which is seeing himself in a different light and understanding that he was doing his job. Understanding that he shouldn’t give up on himself. He shouldn’t hear Curtis’ “war [has the last word”] wail. He’s got the last word. He should understand that there is hope. But now he has to keep working on himself.”
Hudnut also shared that the show could have explored more of the characters’ stories in Season 8. “We were really building up Drew and Omar over the season to the point where next season Omar was going to take steps to start reconciling with his son,” he said. “And there was a whole bunch of other stuff with Drew and his backstory, where with Jason and his teammates’ help, he was going to start making amends with his own family. So, those two characters, I was excited to see where we could take them.”
As for the rumors of a SEAL Team movie, well, Hudnut has some bad news. It’s unlikely… but he hasn’t completely closed the door on it either. In an October interview with Parade, the showrunner was asked if he was considering a movie since the series ending left things “open-ended.”
Hudnut responded, “I feel like that’s probably pretty far-fetched at this point. I think at the end of every season, we tried to paint ourselves into a corner that we had to figure out a way to paint ourselves out of. I’d be happy to take on that challenge if it ever came to that. You never say never.”
