In an upcoming episode of SEAL Team, Bravo Team leader Jason Hayes (played by David Boreanaz) has a rare moment of relaxed reflection on a beach while drinking a bottle of the show’s famous (and fictional) Liberty Anthem beer.
“After a successful mission, the beer always tastes better,” Hayes muses ironically.
For Boreanaz, who has played the leader of the elite Navy SEALs unit since 2017, the statement has greater meaning, knowing that Season 7 of the Paramount+ series (the first two episodes stream Sunday) will mark the end of “SEAL Team.” It’s time to declare “mission accomplished” for the military series, which still comes as a blow to the cast, crew and Semper Fi fanbase.
“I always thought of the dialogue in ‘SEAL Team’ as a metaphor, and now is the right time to end the show,” Boreanaz, 55, told USA TODAY. “But the beer … it tasted bittersweet.”
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Why does SEAL Team end in season 7?
Sure, it’s hard to let go of the gritty, long-running series. Boreanaz and Hayes have survived every kind of gritty firefight since 2017, when “SEAL Team” was a primetime CBS show. They kept going when the series moved from the network to Paramount+ ahead of Season 5, and endured the death of core member Clay Spenser in Season 6 (when actor Max Thieriot left the show to create “Fire Country”).
Despite a tight budget, “SEAL Team” was able to maintain its loyal, if not overwhelming, audience.
“You look at some of those seasons and wonder, ‘How the hell did we do that with the budget we had?'” says Boreanaz. “I would put SEAL Team up against any major action movie.”
However, Boreanaz says he supported, or even encouraged, the idea of ending the series after that season, which was delayed by the Hollywood strike – at least in part because of the physical demands on a 50-something actor portraying an active Navy SEAL every week.
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“My body was sore and achy; I had four MRIs in four months,” Boreanaz says. Hayes’ promotion in Season 4 to get him out of the weekly fights didn’t last long. “Hayes is just not the type of guy to stay behind the scenes and watch his men go out without him.”
A close-quarters fight between Hayes and an armed terrorist at the beginning of Season 7 shows that Boreanaz can still take down the beast. But it comes at a price.
“We wanted it to be brutal,” he says. “The hips and shoulders hurt. You put the ankle brace on and it’s just part of the game.”
Does Jason Hayes die in season 7 of SEAL Team?
Bravo Team is initially benched by Marine leadership in Season 7 for causing trouble while seeking support for real-world issues like traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. But Hayes and his “SEAL Team” crew — including Ray Perry (Neil Brown Jr.) and Sonny Quinn (AJ Buckley) — are sent on one final mission that involves a return to Afghanistan. That trip becomes so dangerous that Boreanaz repeatedly hints at the prospect of ending the series with Hayes’ death.
FYI, this probably won’t happen, but it has been discussed.
“What excited me about the end of the series was the complete end of the character,” says Boreanaz. “Because that happens every time you get out of a Blackhawk helicopter on a mission.”
If history is anything to go by, Boreanaz has never put a stake through the heart in the finale of any of his previous characters or TV series, including “Angel,” the WB’s supernatural spinoff of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The open-ended 2004 finale finds Angel and his vampire friends battling an overwhelming army of supernatural monsters as an indomitable Angel growls, “Let’s get to work.”
“Will (Angel) make it, won’t he? That makes the audience curious,” says Boreanaz. “They’re thirsty for more.”
The actor’s Fox police drama “Bones” ended in 2017 after 12 years and 246 episodes. Boreanaz’s FBI special agent Seeley Booth and Emily Deschanel’s forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan were still in a good position after foiling a hair-raising bombing plot. The two “Bones” stars are good friends, even though Boreanaz has not appeared on Deschanel’s episode analysis podcast “Boneheads.” (Officially, he attributes the oversight to “SEAL Team” planning.)
A long-overdue podcast appearance may be in the future, but Boreanaz says theThere are no “serious discussions” about reviving previous characters or series or appearing in a new “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot. He is planning his next move.
“I’m now seeing the fruits of the labor I planted during ‘SEAL Team’ begin to ripen, whether it’s in the form of a new series, a new movie or a new stage play,” says Boreanaz. “For me, it’s basically ending a series and starting a new project.”
How does “SEAL Team” end for David Boreanaz?
There are still many storylines to tie together, but the finale of “SEAL Team,” titled “The Last Word,” will air on Oct. 6. Boreanaz says the story will be set in Honduras, with the month-long shoot taking place in Colombia.
Instead of Liberty Anthem beer, each cast and crew member received several bottles of Boreanaz’s finest bubbly to toast the final scene. The end of SEAL Team may be bittersweet, but the real conclusion to the show’s final scene was a champagne-soaked Colombian beach party under the setting sun.
“Popping the corks and spraying champagne like I just won the World Series was one of the most satisfying finishes I’ve ever had,” Boreanaz says. “I have a hilarious video of us spraying each other. It was a huge relief to know we had accomplished what we set out to do.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Season 7 of ‘SEAL Team’ will be the last, but epic David Boreanaz promises
