SEAL Team Star David Boreanaz Reflects on Clay’s Death and Reveals Jason’s Final Storyline
A few months before its premiere, Paramount+ announced that SEAL Team Season 7 would be the show’s final season. The first two episodes debuted on August 11, with new episodes dropping weekly on Sundays. While the Season 6 finale may have seemed like a wrap, there are still plenty of storylines to explore when SEAL Team returns. Following Clay’s death in Season 6, Jason spoke out about his TBI, inspiring his teammates to be open about their own illnesses. Whether or not command will attempt to take action against the entire team remains to be seen.

SEAL Team moved from CBS to Paramount+ for Season 5, and star David Boreanaz believes it was ultimately for the best. Boreanaz admitted that the series doesn’t follow the same formula as network  television, adding that the creative team didn’t want to sugarcoat Clay’s tragic death. The actor went on to tease that anything could happen in the final episodes, and Jason may not get the ending fans are expecting.

David Boreanaz: I’ve played this character for eight years and seven seasons, which is how the show has evolved. I knew going into this season that it would be my last season. I’ve been waiting for this moment to talk about it. For me personally, I just saw it as a great time for this character to come full circle for what these particular executives are going through.

It makes sense because of the characters and his relationship with the teams and the brotherhood, so I’m happy to come to that conclusion. That was something I decided before the writers’ strike happened, and then the writers’ strike happened, and things went crazy for a couple of months, you know. And then we just decided that that was it. I’m so happy and humbled to be able to play a character of that magnitude, but my body thanked me for taking a break and letting this go.

Clay’s death in season 6 was heartbreaking. How will the characters continue to feel the loss throughout the rest of the final season?

David Boreanaz: We’ve always said that these men and women, specifically the executives, could or could not have made it. We don’t sugarcoat it. We don’t make it a big moment in a long-running television episode like this. One of the reasons we’re so focused on being a streaming channel rather than a television show is that we don’t check those boxes.

There’s always an authenticity to a character being taken out—a nicer way to say it’s being shot or killed, or not being able to do it. I think that’s something Jason Hayes will consider for the series finale. We always want to remind the audience that you don’t know when you’re going to get shot. I think in today’s world of storytelling, especially with operators, it can happen at any time.

Jason has been vocal about his TBI and the team has supported him and shared their own trauma. What impact will that have going forward?

David Boreanaz: We looked at TBI, we looked at PTS, his relationships back home, how he balances that. The biggest thing we haven’t looked at is how an operator deals with his first murder and then after that. What kind of trauma is that and for a lot of these operators, that’s always the highest level of demon, the hardest thing to deal with. And that’s going to have a huge impact on Jason’s character going forward.

It’s going to weigh on his mind, which isn’t balanced with his heart at first. He thought it was, and he took a break for the first few episodes, but he found that he was causing more problems at home than he could handle and found that balance might never happen. And so he came back mid-season to the brotherhood and the team, but his fate might not be as happy as some fans would like.

Speaking more about Jason’s family life, what challenges might he continue to face this season as he tries to balance his roles as a father and a Navy SEAL?

David Boreanaz: They always have that balance and those struggles and adversities, the balance with their family life, the balance with their relationships, the balance with coming back and not getting the love that they deserve from their country. That weighs heavily on Jason this season and toward the end of the series. I’m excited to take that to the grave, without giving too much away.