In an upcoming episode of “SEAL Team,” Bravo Team captain Jason Hayes, David Boreanaz, takes a rare moment to relax and reflect on the beach while sipping a bottle of the show’s famous (and fictional) Liberty Anthem beer.
“Beer always tastes better after a successful mission,” Hayes mused wryly.
For Boreanaz, who has played the commander of the Navy SEALs’ most elite unit since 2017, the line carries even more weight, knowing that Season 7 of the Paramount+ series (the first two episodes are streaming now, then airing weekly on Sundays) will mark the end of “SEAL Team.” It’s time to declare “mission accomplished” for the military show, which still comes as a shock to the cast, crew and semper-fi fanbase.
“I’ve always looked at the ‘SEAL Team’ line as a metaphor, and it felt like the right time to end the series,” Boreanaz, 55, told USA TODAY. “But that beer… is bittersweet.”
Why did ‘SEAL Team’ end with Season 7?
It’s certainly hard to let go of the long-running, intense series. Boreanaz and Hayes have survived all sorts of intense firefights since 2017, when “SEAL Team” was a primetime show on CBS. They continued to air when the series moved from broadcast to Paramount+ before Season 5 and endured the death of core cast member Clay Spenser on television in Season 6 (when actor Max Thieriot left the show to join CBS’s “Fire Country”).
“SEAL Team” has continued to have a loyal, if not massive, audience and a tight budget.
“You watch some of these seasons and you’re like, ‘How the hell did we do that on that budget?’ ” Boreanaz said. “I would put ‘SEAL Team’ up there with any big action movie.” Still, Boreanaz said he supported, even endorsed, the idea of ending the show after this Hollywood-struck season, at least in part because of the physical toll it would take on an actor in his 50s playing a Navy SEAL on a weekly basis.
“My body was aching; I had four MRIs in four months,” Boreanaz said. Hayes’ promotion in Season 4 to escape the weekly battles didn’t last long. “Hayes is not someone who just sits back and watches his teammates go without him.” A fistfight between Hayes and an armed terrorist early in Season 7 showed that Boreanaz could still bring the beast. But at a cost. “We wanted it to be brutal,” he said. “Your hips and shoulders hurt. You have to wear ankle braces, and that’s just part of the game.”
Did Jason Hayes die in ‘SEAL Team’ Season 7?
Bravo Team was initially sidelined by senior Navy officers in Season 7 for being unpopular while seeking help for real-life issues like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. But Hayes and his “SEAL Team” crew − including Ray Perry (Neil Brown Jr.) and Sonny Quinn (A.J. Buckley) − are released for one last mission, which involves returning to Afghanistan. The trip will be so dangerous that Boreanaz has repeatedly teased the prospect of ending the show with Hayes’ death.
FYI, this probably won’t happen, but it has been discussed.
“What excites me about ending the show is to completely end the character,” Boreanaz said. “Because that’s what happens every time you get out of a Blackhawk helicopter on a mission.”
If history is any guide, Boreanaz hasn’t delivered a fatal blow to the heart to any of his past characters or TV shows, including “Angel,” the WB’s supernatural spinoff of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The 2004 finale featured Angel and his vampire pals preparing to battle an overwhelming army of supernatural monsters, with an unbowed Angel growling, “Let’s get to work.”
“Is (Angel) going to make it, or is he not going to make it? That teases the audience,” Boreanaz said. “There’s a hunger for more.”
The actor’s Fox police procedural “Bones” ended in 2017 after 12 years and 246 episodes. Boreanaz’s FBI agent Seeley Booth and Emily Deschanel’s forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan are still in good hands after foiling one last hair-raising bomb plot. The two “Bones” stars are great friends, even if Boreanaz doesn’t appear on Deschanel’s “Boneheads” episode analysis podcast. (He officially cites the “SEAL Team” schedule for oversight.)
There may be a future overdue podcast, but Boreanaz says there have been no “serious discussions” about resurrecting any past characters or shows or appearing in bottles of the finest bubbly from Boreanaz to toast the final scene. Ending “SEAL Team” might be bittersweet, but actually completing the show’s ultimate scene was a Champagne-soaked Colombian beach party under the setting sun.
“To be able to pop corks and spray Champagne like I just won the World Series made it one of the most satisfying endings of all for me,” says Boreanaz. “I have hilarious video of us all spraying each other. It was a great relief knowing we accomplished what we set out to accomplish.”
