David Boreanaz Enters ‘SEAL Team’ Season 7’s Final Mission. What’s Next for Jason Hayes?

In an upcoming episode of “SEAL Team,” Bravo Team leader Jason Hayes, played by 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 leader of the Navy SEALs’ most elite unit since 2017, the line has even more resonance, knowing that Season 7 of the Paramount+ series (the first two episodes are streaming now, then 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.”

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Certainly, it’s hard to let go of the long-running, gritty 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 the broadcast network to Paramount+ before Season 5 and endured the death of core cast member Clay Spenser in Season 6 on television (when actor Max Thieriot left the show to join CBS’s “Fire Country”).

“SEAL Team” has continued with a loyal, if not massive, audience and a tight budget.

“You watch some of these seasons and you’re like, ‘How could we do that on that budget?’” Boreanaz said. “I’d put ‘SEAL Team’ next to any big action movie.”

Still, Boreanaz said he supported, even endorsed, the idea of ​​ending the show after this season, which was delayed by the Hollywood strike, 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 wear ankle braces and that’s just part of the game.”
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Bravo Team was initially sidelined by senior Navy officials 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, that probably won’t happen, but it has been discussed.

“What excites me about ending the show is to completely end the character,” Boreanaz says. “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 the deathblow to the heart of any character or TV show in his past, including “Angel,” the supernatural WB spinoff of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The 2004 open-ended finale saw Angel and his vampire friends preparing to fight an overwhelming army of supernatural monsters, with an unbowed Angel growling, “Let’s get to work.”

“Can (Angel) do it, can he not do 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 a hair-raising final bombing plot. The two “Bones” stars are great friends, even if Boreanaz hasn’t appeared on Deschanel’s “Boneheads” episode analysis podcast. (He officially cites the “SEAL Team” schedule for oversight.)
An overdue podcast appearance could happen in the future, but Boreanaz said there have been no “discussions” about it.

as a stand-in).

In lieu of Liberty Anthem beer, each cast and crew member received bottles of Boreanaz’s finest sparkling wine to celebrate the final scene. The “SEAL Team” ending may have been a sweet one, but the show’s final act was truly a Champagne-fueled Colombian beach party at sunset.

“Getting to pop the cork and spray Champagne like I’d just won the World Series was one of the most satisfying endings for me,” Boreanaz said. “I have a funny video of us spraying each other. It was a relief to know that we accomplished what we set out to do.”