[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the SEAL Team series finale “The Last Word.”]
By the end of the SEAL Team series finale, Bravo is moving forward without two key members—but, perhaps surprisingly, not because either of them dies.
Still operating are Jason (David Boreanaz)—who’s doing better after going to see the wife of the first man he killed in Afghanistan—Omar (Raffi Barsoumian), Drew (Beau Knapp), Brock (Justin Melnick), and Trent (Tyler Grey). Ray (Neil Brown Jr.), meanwhile, does not retire to join Naima (Parisa Fakhri) full-time as Spenser House but instead takes the head of warfighter health position that had been marked for Jason. Sonny (A.J. Buckley) is also off Bravo, having given up his trident to ensure the investigation into who hit Colonel Decker didn’t stop Davis (Toni Trucks) from getting the promotion she deserved—and they’re now together!
TV Insider spoke with executive producer Spencer Hudnut about landing on those endings, not killing anyone off, and much more.
What made this the right ending?
Spencer Hudnut: I think the message of hope. Really after seven seasons of putting our characters through so many ups and downs, whether in their personal lives, in their mental health, it just felt like we wanted to leave them in a place—I care about these characters. We’ve dragged them through so much. I wanted to get them to a place where it felt earned but that they were all in places where they felt like we could see what came next for them. For Jason, while he’s continuing to operate, he at least has this new context of how he sees himself, how he sees his future, with Mandy’s [Jessica Paré] help and his teammates’ help, he’s kind of battled through the shame that he was dealing with all season; that journey to Afghanistan actually really helped him kind of get on the path to atoning for his past.
And so it just felt like, what would be the point after 114 episodes to end it in a way that was anything but—it doesn’t necessarily need to be uplifting. I think there’s a tragic element to Jason still operating, but I think our military community who had watched this show is so important to us that to give a glimmer of hope and to remind people that the rest of us, that we need to do so much more for our men and women in uniform and vets… That just felt like an opportunity to really celebrate these characters, this community in a positive way.
Michael Moriatis/Paramount+
Did you ever consider killing off Jason or removing him from operating?
Of course. How could I not?
How close did you come to it?
In a world where David was going to leave but the show was going to continue, that would’ve been challenging, and I think there would’ve been a temptation to maybe exit his character in a different way. David and I have always kind of been of a similar mindset that this character means so much to so many people that to have him come to a tragic end, what would be the point of that? And so while I could justify it with Clay [Max Thieriot, who left for Fire Country], I think for Jason it’s a completely different thing. So, no. I would say if you asked me Season 4, the answer might have been, yeah, Jason might come to a tough ending, but especially on the heels of Clay in Season 6, it just felt like we’ve all been through too much.
Is that also why you didn’t kill off anyone else before the series ended?
Yes. Obviously, Nate [Daniel Gillies] died in the pilot, Adam [Michael Irby] died in Season 2, Full Metal [Scott Foxx] died, and then Clay. I think Clay’s death allowed us to really get under the hood and examine what that was like for his teammates and how painful that was, and I think we were saying something with his death. To just kill someone else to make it tragic or to remind people what war is about, what can happen in war… We’ve spent so much time dealing with the consequences of war that I couldn’t find a justifiable reason to do it to any of our characters. I also truly love them all and wanted to see them get to places.
And I think it’s more surprising [where they ended up]. I think Sonny deciding to leave the Navy is a much bigger statement than Sonny being killed on the battlefield. I think Ray deciding to stay in and continue to watch his teammates’ backs but in a new way is more interesting than seeing him die. And I think for Jason, the mixed bag of seeing hope of a future but also not being able to quit operating or quit this work is both a heroic and kind of tragic ending for him.
There are two things that we didn’t see: Jason’s conversation with the wife of his first kill and the rescue of Bravo with the cut to the wedding. Can you talk about your decision to handle those scenes like that?
Just for timeline purposes, we started breaking the season in January of 2023. The writers showed up in February and March. By the time the strike came around, we had broken all of it and seven scripts were in the works. And we came back in October. We got, I think, all the way through maybe script 9, and then I found out the show was ending. So at no point did I have the context that the show was going to actually end until we were about five weeks from starting production.
Michael Moriatis/Paramount+
And so what I had originally imagined for the end of Season 7 was Jason and Mandy actually arriving in Afghanistan and on their journey to meet the wife of the man who was his first kill. I never had that scene in my head. And so then all of a sudden when I was trying to land the plane and retrofit it, it became a challenge of, well, what does that scene really look like knowing that we only have 47 minutes to do all of this stuff? It felt like Jason relaying what happened in that scene to his teammates was almost more powerful than whatever could happen in that scene. And so once we started the finale, I think we came to a consensus of, we don’t need to see that scene as much as I would love to see that scene. And what was the other?
The rescue of Bravo because then you cut to them at the wedding.
No, we were never going to see that because there was a world where the episode was 56 minutes and that explosion happens at minute 43, 44, whatever it was. People would think for a couple seconds, similar to the end of Season 5, we’re just going to end it that way, and then you come in. And so we were trying to have a little bit of fun with the fake-out of, okay, we see them blown up. Now we’re in a church, everyone’s in their dress uniform. Is this a funeral? And it’s not. So yeah, that was always just going to be a little bit of a fake-out.
Just like Jason can’t leave the fight, Ray can’t leave his brothers. But what would it take for that to change, for him to retire and go to Spenser House full-time?
That was his plan going back into mid-Season 6. The guilt he feels about how Clay’s death is linked to Spenser House, [and] I think even when we come into Season 7, we realize that Ray has been much more hands-off with it than you would’ve thought, which allowed for Naima to really take control of the place—and the place is thriving without Ray’s help. So by staying in, he is not hurting Spenser House in any way. I think his comfort zone is he wants to have an impact without his rifle, but he also says during Season 7 that he wishes there wasn’t a need for places like Spenser House. And the best way to do that, I think, is to take care of our men and women in uniform while they’re still in uniform and help them with that transition.
And so I think Ray, until he feels like command is doing everything in their power to combat the issues facing these operators, is going to stay there and be a thorn in their side very much like we opened the season with him sitting in on a budget meeting and rolling his eyes at them, but now he has an actual seat at that table and can really, really impact how these operators are taken care of. And this is an opportunity that Jason clearly pushed on him. Once again, Jason is looking out for his teammate and best friend and finds, I think, the best off-ramp for Ray.
Trae Patton/Paramount+
Sonny gave up his trident for Davis, but how much did trying to do what Clay would do also factor into his decision?
Yeah, going back to Clay’s injury at the end of 601, I think it’s forced Sonny to be what Clay always wanted him to be, which is to see himself as more than a knuckle-dragger. I think taking on added responsibility with Clay, taking care of his family, the med kit, and then coming into this season, we see Sonny taking a role within Bravo that he hasn’t taken before. The irony is he thinks Jason and Ray are leaving, so he needs to try to hold the team together in a way that he hasn’t before. And I think just the way he sees himself has changed. Then when Stella [Alona Tal] repeats Clay’s last words to her, I think it really has an impact on him.
And I think because of the way Sonny feels about himself, for the first time, he’s really comfortable in his own skin. He has the ability to realize what’s behind him is a great career that he’s loved every minute of, but also what’s in front of him is he’s at a crossroads. He can stay in the Navy and allow his daughter to probably grow up with a closer relationship with her stepdad than with him and he can allow himself to never really have that relationship with Davis that he so desperately wants. And so to do exactly what Clay did, where Clay got to at the end of Season 6 with Stella—”I’ve lived my dream now go live yours”—I think Sonny has evolved more than any character in the show.
Speaking of Sonny and Davis, why did it take until the end of the series for them to be together?
I think we know what they feel about each other. We feel it obviously during the Honduras mission, they have their kiss, which was for cover, but then they have the conversation, and I think we can tell that they both really want this, but every time they crack that door open, it just ends up getting slammed in their face and it’s painful. And I do think for us it was important to, the second they’re together, they’re breaking—there’s breaking rules. Sonny goes off and punches Colonel Decker, he’s standing up for his friend. We can justify it. I think for them to break the rules just felt wrong for us because they’re so serious—they’re not serious about themselves, but they’re serious about their jobs.
So yeah, there was that one last reveal, the surprise of Sonny giving up his trident, and then maybe we’re twisting the knife a little bit with our fans, seeing Davis driving by herself and Sonny leaving by himself. But sure enough, they end up together in that car holding hands and driving off into sunset together. If their feelings were both buried for seven years, then maybe we’d have a scene about them expressing what they think of each other, but we know exactly where their hearts are.
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Are there any alternate endings for any of the characters that you considered that you can talk about?
I think even going back to when we broke the season for the most part, Sonny is where he was going to be, Ray’s where he was going to be. We definitely had more—Omar was going to make a journey to try to reconnect with his son. We had more Drew, we had a lot more Drew backstory and put him on a journey that didn’t make it into the final cut of the episode. But no, for the most part. The one thing that changed when we found out it was ending was Emma [Kerri Medders] was not getting married in the original break of the season, but it felt like a wedding, the hint of a wedding throughout the season would allow us to either get to the funeral or get to a wedding in the last episode. That was one of the big changes we made.
Did you ever consider a Jason and Mandy wedding or talking about getting married? Or do you like where you left them?
No, we definitely considered that. Mandy says “I love you” in this episode, which is new ground for us. I think for both of those characters, the focus on how they find peace with themselves, which allows them to be together in a better way, is more important than ultimately solidifying that relationship in marriage. Until Jason is at peace and believes that war doesn’t have the last word, whether he gets married or not is less important than how he feels about himself. And so it just felt like we didn’t want the message to be getting married is going to be the most important element of their lives, but I think they’re moving in some direction closer to that. I mean, living in an Airstream together on the beach, is their happily ever after.
SEAL Team, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Paramount+
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