David Boreanaz on Whether Bravo 1 Survives the Final Season of 'SEAL Team'

SEAL Team returns for its seventh and final season Sunday and series star David Boreanaz reveals that it also might be the swan song for the military drama’s main man Jason Hayes, aka Bravo 1, in what could be a fitting end to his story.

When asked if the series has a happy ending, Boreanaz told Parade, “As far as a happy ending is concerned, what’s happy to the authenticity of the character? Dying on the battlefield? Having the flag wrapped over the coffin, maybe being wheeled off, understanding what that sacrifice is? Sounds about right for Jason. Let’s see what happens.”

SEAL Team has always been a tear-invoking series with the loss of team members, the breakup of marriages, the mental issues that arise from being a door kicker, because it was always important to the producers, cast and crew to have a real representation of life as a SEAL Team member, and that hasn’t changed for the final season.

“That’s the reality of it,” Boreanaz continued. “I think that’s bittersweet in its own way, right? Because you’re ultimately sacrificing for protecting and serving the country without having any kind of an agenda. That’s what I love about our show, this is not a political show, never has been. I remember early on, I think in the first season, we were doing a press conference, and some reporter was asking about the political views and are you left or right. No, we’re not, this is what we do. This is the get the job done, mission succeeded, boom, capture, kill, zero footprint, that’s how we are. Those are the types of characters that we are.”

But before the end comes, there’s the beginning of SEAL Team Season 7, and following is what Boreanaz told us we can expect in the coming season:

Related: Here’s What’s Happening When SEAL Team Returns for its Seventh & Final Season

What did you hope to achieve for your final season on SEAL Team?

In preparation, before the season even started, it was imprinted on me saying, “For me, the character’s done, I’m done playing the series, I’m done with the show regardless if you want to go on or not.” I had made that decision early on. Then the writers’ strike hit, and some months passed by. I had come to that fruition before it even started.

In this last season of the series, it was beautiful that we were able to examine the full spectrum for the character. We’ve studied the TBI, we’ve studied the PTS, we know that the greater of it all is what does the first kill mean to an operator, how does he handle that, how does he handle that going forward, how does that haunt him, how does he deal with that trauma?

That was, for me, an imprint that’s like, “Okay, if I say the theme of this season going into the end of the series is you never leave a brother behind,” that was a very important theme for Jason Hayes. Never leave a family behind, never leave a balance behind, never leave yourself behind, be self-aware in your role as a special operator, how do you handle that, how do you deal with the trauma?

It’s a very difficult trauma for him to understand, lean into and deal with, quite honestly. We see him kind of on the outside looking in, on the sidelines the first few episodes, thinking that he’s got everything he has in check and in balance. Of course, obviously, Jason never does have things really in check and in balance because he thinks, he’s imprinted, he’s more of a disturbance to the people around him, where his real darkness is the battlefield and pushing people away.

You slowly see those flags in his relationship with Mandy (Jessica Paré) and how that develops and how she sees that and how she’s scared he’s going to go back to his old ways. I think that’s something that these real men fight normally and realistically. So that’s exciting knowing that we’re able to study that first kill and what that means and the traumas and whatnot. Ultimately the battlefield, we’ve always said this is where these real men die. That may be a payoff for Jason, he may not make it.

Related: 50 Photos of David Boreanaz from His Time on SEAL Team

When we come back, Jason’s done a lot of work on himself and we see him at the beach with his family while the team’s been put on hold. The changes in Jason this season, how did you approach him as a different man?

Well, Jason’s character where, through the exercise in working on the TBI and understanding how he’s healing from that, it gets catapulted into the imbalance of him, again, thinking that where he is with his family is the right place to be. That starts to crumble around him. Then he starts to have second doubts about that. Then he starts to find himself in situations with his son that ultimately could become fatal. He feels, “I’m guilty for that, I’m putting myself on that, if I wasn’t here or if I was somewhere else I probably would have saved him.” That’s what we’re going to see with Jason, is we see those edges fall apart. The audience, we’ve got to earn that to see that and the character’s got to go through these little details in order to get there. So, it’s really self-examination of the trauma and how the ultimate trauma of it all could do him in.

Bravo has been the No. 1 team to send out on missions for six seasons, but now there’s all this discussion about a new era of warfare. How does the team adapt to that? Or do they?

I think that the adaptation is always the consistency and the discipline of how they were trained and how they operate as a team, and how one new team member can come in and seem to be destructive and arrogant in this new character [Beau Knapp] that comes on who’s just a great, really cool character they accept into Bravo team. Their weaknesses are the greatest strengths if they’re surrounded by the team as a whole, not just pointing them out and not dealing with them. So, we see that progression with Bravo this season.

I know specifically for Jason going back into the brotherhood on the teams and on the front, it becomes conflicting for him because the evolution of the new warfare he struggles with that in a lot of ways. He is one man, sometimes his impulse to take care of it and his decisiveness is what makes him that true team leader. He’s the tip of the spear. So now he’s got to point it in a different direction and take it in that same intensity. But is he healed enough to do that? How is the trauma of his first kills and those nightmares going to affect him this season? And we see that. That’s what’s exciting about it.

We have two new cast members this season, Beau Knapp as Chief Special Warfare Operator Drew Franklin and Dylan Walsh as Captain Walch. Talk a little bit about who they’re playing and how they’ll fit in.

Dylan, the cake eater, respectfully with the general’s responsibility of moving things around, it was a joy to see that character. From Jason’s perspective, the willingness character wise to be like, “This is an opportunity for this new kind of lifestyle. What’s your work going to be like outside of the teams, and how does Jason connect with that in the true sense of that other character prodding and poking the bear a little bit.” Jason gets a little frustrated with him and then Blackburn’s [Judd Lormand] kind of like being Switzerland in between. It’s a great triangle combination that happens.

With Beau, I’ve actually worked with Beau. He was on the season finale of Bones. I cast him as the bad guy, which is hilarious. He brings a sense of strength and what a member of the team could be. What seems to be destructive and only one-sided, there’s so many layers to that. It’s almost like a reflection, the same as what Jason is going through. They kind of peel each other’s layers off and then they get vulnerable with each other as the season progresses down the line.

We’re in Honduras shooting these huge scenes. We understand his loss and how he never embraced it and what happened to his past history on another team and what’s his reputation coming over. That’s exciting for not only the other team members, but also for Jason. And where he’s at, how I’m going to deal with this recluse, well I’ve seen it before because that’s how I was and that’s how I started. There’ll be a lot of moments of the two of them sparring a little bit, but Jason always knowing, “I’ve seen this before, I know where it’s going.”

Are the fans going to be happy? Are we going to wrap this up in a nice little bow? Or are we going to keep it open-ended maybe so that there could be a movie down the line?

A movie down the line is something you could do with this show because you can present a mission in between any of these seasons. You could say, “Okay, this movie is going to take place before the end of Season 1 or at the end of Season 6. That’s the military. That’s the creative aspect of how we can take that anywhere. That’s always a possibility and something I think I wouldn’t take off the table.

For the character itself, there is no wrapping a bow on the authenticity of a show of this magnitude. We’re not a network show. We’re on a streaming platform. We moved to where we felt as though we would be best served as far as telling these types of stories. We were never a network check-the-box, poppy-calendar-colorful, let’s-play-that-soft-music-over-a-scene, circusy show. I’m sorry. It’s lack of emotionality. I don’t want to take away from other shows that are network. There are some great shows that are out there. But we just didn’t fit that type of billing.

The seventh and final season of SEAL Team is scheduled to premiere Sunday, Aug. 11 with two new episodes. Then each Sunday a new episode will release until the series finale. There are a total of 10 episodes in the final season.

Next, Fire Country Producers Explain Season 2 Finale Cliffhangers and What They Mean for Season 3