SEAL Team premiered in 2017 as a military drama aimed at primetime audiences, and it has spent six seasons doing what military dramas do best: delivering tight action, strong performances, and a steady stream of emotional beats. The show follows Team Six, a Navy SEAL unit led by Marcus Rayburn (Eric Johnson), through missions around the world. It is a solid piece of television, but it rarely reaches beyond the formula that defines it.
Trailer, via Paramount Plus.
Marcus Rayburn and the Core Unit
Marcus Rayburn is the heart of the show. Eric Johnson plays him with a quiet intensity that carries the weight of leadership, loss, and the personal stakes that drive each mission. His wife, Hannah (Jessica Paré), is a constant presence, and their relationship provides the human anchor that grounds the action. The core unit — Rayburn, Birkholz (Max Greenfield), Lassiter (David James Elliott), and others — works as a tight ensemble, and their chemistry holds the series together when the plot grows thin.
The Case Against SEALS
The show has a problem with scope. Missions tend to be one-offs, built around a threat of the week that resolves neatly by the finale. That approach limits the sense of ongoing conflict. The season also leans heavily on personal drama, sometimes at the expense of tactical depth. A mission can feel less like a strategic operation and more like a vehicle for a character’s emotional arc.
Season One Through Six
SEAL Team has stayed consistent across its run. Each season follows a similar pattern: a crisis, a mission, a resolution, and a return to base. The show excels at the setup — the briefing, the planning, the tension in the field — but the payoff often feels predictable. The sixth season, like the others, keeps the formula intact while adding new threats and shifting alliances within the unit.
| Season | Focus | Critical Reception |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foundation of Team Six | Strong start |
| 2 | Expansion of cast | Mixed reviews |
| 3 | Deepening of Rayburn’s arc | Solid middle |
| 4 | New threats emerge | Slightly weaker |
| 5 | Personal stakes rise | Strong |
| 6 | Ongoing conflicts | Mixed |
Strengths and Weaknesses
The strengths are easy to identify:
- The acting is consistently strong, especially Johnson’s performance as Rayburn.
- The action sequences are well-choreographed and tense.
- The unit dynamics provide genuine warmth and camaraderie.
The weaknesses are equally clear:
- The plotting can feel repetitive, with similar threats and resolutions.
- Some missions lack strategic complexity.
- The show tends to favor emotional beats over tactical detail.
What Works
SEAL Team is at its best when it focuses on the team itself. The relationships between Rayburn, Birkholz, and Lassiter are the show’s strongest material. The quieter moments, when the team talks strategy or shares a meal after a mission, carry more weight than the explosions that surround them. The show also benefits from its setting — the SEALs operate in locations that add visual variety, from deserts to cities to remote islands.
What Doesn’t Work
The pacing suffers when the show relies too heavily on personal drama. A mission that should feel urgent can drag when the focus shifts to a character’s internal struggle. The season also faces a larger issue: the SEALs themselves are competent professionals, but the show often treats their enemies as mere obstacles rather than genuine threats.
SEAL Team is a reliable watch, but it rarely surprises. It delivers what it promises — tense action, strong characters, and a steady beat of emotion — without pushing past the boundaries of its genre. The show is at its best when it trusts its own strengths and stays focused on the unit, and at its weakest when it tries to expand its scope beyond what the formula allows.
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