SEAL Team’s David Boreanaz Reveals What’s Next for Jason and His Status With Mandy After the Season Premiere
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Dec 2’s SEAL Team. If you haven’t watched, stop reading!
When SEAL Team returned Wednesday night, it picked up right where it had left off. The first episode back, which was directed by David Boreanaz, had been filmed before production was shut down last March by COVID-19.
In it, Bravo Team entered enemy territory to capture Al-Hazred, the leader of a terrorist group and the son of the terrorist leader that Jason Hayes took down early in his career. At that time, Jason had made the decision to leave the boy alive.
“This mission weighs heavily on his shoulders and he sees himself on a merry-go-round that’s not stopping,” Boreanaz tells Parade.com about Jason’s attitude at this point in his career. “You find the bad guy; you catch the bad guy. He just keeps going around and around in circles. So, for him, his forward focus is to get the job done.”
While on the mission, Jason gets blown off the side of the mountain, is rescued by and rescues Cerberus (Dita) when the dog is knifed by one of the terrorists, and he starts to have flashbacks to where he was 13 years ago. With the hunt for Al-Hazred, Jason feels as if he has come full circle.
Even so, it was surprising at the end of the second episode when Jason made an announcement that made it look as if he knew the time had come to walk away from Bravo Team as Captain Lindell had been urging him to do.
“At the end of these two episodes, we teased the season,” Boreanaz says. “Does he go back to Bravo Team to help out a SEAL Team member that’s been captured and could be killed? Is that his last dance? There’s a lot that’s coming up that’s going to define his role in society and that will ultimately kill him or save him the team. I’m a betting man, but I don’t know if Jason makes it.”
Of course, there wouldn’t be a SEAL Team without Jason, so we are betting that Jason makes it. We spoke to Boreanaz more about the fallout from the episode, the status of his relationship with Mandy (Jessica Paré), the challenges in directing the episode and working with actual SEAL Team members.
At the end, Jason looks like he’s going to walk away. It very well could have been the last Bravo Team mission in the team’s present form. What can you tease about what’s coming up?
It’s going back to what these men and women go through when they come back and how they’re accepted into society.
Some make it; some don’t. We’ve looked at that before with Clay and his buddy who committed suicide. The pressures and understanding of society and what these guys have done and been through is taxing on them. And for them to step away from that is tough and will spiral them or uplift them somehow.
So, Jason’s looking for that and may or may not find that. I always say with this show, we all have crosshairs on our backs because of the type of work that they do. And that loneliness, even when they’re in a relationship or around family, there’s that feeling of, “I can’t wait to get back out. I can’t wait.”
It’s that drive, that passion. They love to do what they do. And then as they get older with it, they learn what sacrifice is about. It’s a choice. I just made a choice because I love to do that. That’s what I’m going to do. And, talking with a lot of them, I think their biggest fear is their failure. So, that just runs their world and it works on their mental aspect of it.
In the finale, we saw Jason going into Mandy’s room. Then we have these scenes in the premiere where they talk about what happened. Was it just in the moment? Or is there more of a connection there?
I think that the Mandy and Jason connection has always been there. When he lost his wife and she came and saw him and sat in the car–the MG that he rebuilt–the two of them have a history. We’ve never shied away from there.
We’ve always kept that door open and the possibility of what that relationship was about. They were always there for each other, and, I think, that’s present, even when the beginning of the first episode back, she’s like, “You coming into my hooch [shelter], wasn’t just you coming into my hooch.” Jason’s response was like, “Well, I guess what happens in JBAD [doesn’t] stay in JBAD [Jalalabad, Afghanistan],” So, she’s got concerns for him knowing that he’s going off to hunt this guy, whose dad Jason killed 13 years ago, and it’s tormenting him.
So, she’s concerned. And I think that level of concern grows and always has been between the two of them. And at the end of the two-parter, that conversation that he had with her over his favorite place to go eat was very impactful for him because she just spilled it right on the table. “Man, this is it. You can’t live in this world of going around and around. This is the reality here. I’m gone. See you.” And that keeps the door open for that character. So, their relationship has been real. They both have a place
