'SEAL Team' Star David Boreanaz Thanks Veterans and Fans as the Show Approaches Its Final Season

Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Jason Hayes will soon stow his gear for the last time.

"SEAL Team," the long-running series starring actor David Boreanaz as Hayes that began its life on CBS before making its way to Paramount+, will end after its upcoming seventh season. In an interview with Military.com ahead of the final season's premiere on Aug. 11, Boreanaz took the opportunity to thank the veterans who worked on the show, and especially the viewers who watched and supported it, for its success.

"It starts with them in so many ways," Boreanaz told Military.com. "We appreciate the authenticity, because that's what really the scope is, beyond what we're trying to say in certain episodes. It comes down to the details. Every little detail of it was so dialed in ... Understanding the complexity of the emotions of coming home, their relationships and how their loss affects them."

"SEAL Team" follows the professional and personal lives of an elite unit of Navy SEALs as they train, plan and execute the most dangerous, high-stakes missions our country can ask of them. Led by Boreanaz as Hayes, the cast includes Neil Brown Jr. (as Ray Perry), A.J. Buckley (as Sonny Quinn), Toni Trucks (as Lisa Davis) and Raffi Barsoumian (as Omar Hamza). Actor Beau Knapp ("Seven Seconds") will join the cast for its final season.

"I just want them [the fans] to enjoy it," said Boreanaz. "If you haven't seen it, enjoy the epicness of it, like the epic proportions of sequences, the missions, the arrivals, the departures, the intense character emotionality behind it. It is so important. It's what our country is about, right? There's loyalty to it. There is a downright sense of honesty to that sacrifice."

In today's television environment, seven seasons is a good, long run. There's a glut of good television out there, and many shows aim for at least five seasons to get good syndication deals after the end of the series. For context, some 40 shows have been canceled in 2024 so far, with an average run of around 2½ seasons; even shows from established franchises such as "CSI" and "NCIS" got the ax.

While Boreanaz may have enlisted the help of the show's fans to get the series renewed at CBS a few years back, he believes the time is right for the series to end.

"I mean, playing an ultimate operator was pretty badass," Boreanaz said. "I knew that this was the right time. My body was beat up, and now it's the perfect point of saying, 'OK, how do they deal with their kills? What does that mean? How does that trauma impact them? How do they deal with that? How do they go back and lean into it to heal from that?'"

While that might sound like an emotionally heavy final season, "SEAL Team" has always tried to depict the reality of operator life, both on- and off-mission. It's still a television show, so the OPTEMPO might seem a little unreal, the SEALs might have a lot more drama in their lives and they may not always make the "right" call, but it never shies aways from the fact that operations have personal consequences. The results play out in a way that resonates with its veteran viewers. Boreanaz has even had fans of the series approach him to talk about their real-world experiences.

"I think it's a very underrated show," the actor said. "I love the passion behind the remarks I get. People say, 'Hey, thanks for helping me get help,' and, 'I struggled with getting help. Thank you for saving my life.' We shed [the] light and darkness of these operators: the good, the bad, the balance, and I feel good about that. What's great about the show is, it'll exist forever because of how we shot it and the authenticity of it. We'll always have that, and I thank fans for allowing us to tell these types of stories."

The seventh and final season of "SEAL Team" will premiere with the first two episodes on Paramount+ on Aug. 11, 2024. New episodes will follow weekly on Sundays.

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