SEAL Team ran for seven seasons and 112 episodes. The show premiered on CBS on September 27, 2017, created by Benjamin Cavell and produced by CBS Studios. It followed Bravo Team, a sub-unit of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, through missions the network sold as the most dangerous the country could ask of anyone. It ended on Paramount+ on October 6, 2024, with a finale in which Sonny Quinn decides to retire from the Navy and Ray Perry takes a position as Head of Warfighter Health.
That is a long life for a show that, in this paper’s view, spent most of it arguing with itself.
Trailer, via Paramount Plus.
David Boreanaz and the Weight of Bravo 1
David Boreanaz plays Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Jason Hayes, known as Bravo 1/1B, the team’s leader. The premise handed him a built-in wound: Bravo Team is dealing with the recent loss of one of its own. Boreanaz was not the first choice. CBS announced on March 14, 2017, that Jim Caviezel would topline the untitled Navy SEAL pilot. Eight days later, on March 22, Boreanaz was cast in the lead, replacing him.
That swap matters more than most casting stories, in our reading. Caviezel’s screen presence runs toward the martyr; Boreanaz’s runs toward the sergeant who has been awake too long. SEAL Team needed the second thing. Hayes is not a mystery to be solved. He is a man doing a job that keeps costing him pieces of his life, and Boreanaz plays the weariness without asking for sympathy.
The show’s best scenes, to our eye, are rarely the firefights. They are Hayes and Ray Perry in a truck, or Hayes and Sonny Quinn arguing about whether to go home.
Ray Perry, Sonny Quinn, and the Team Around Jason
Neil Brown Jr. plays Chief Warrant Officer 2 Raymond “Ray” Perry, formerly Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator, call sign Mako 1/MK-1, formerly Bravo 2/2B. He is Jason’s most trusted friend and the longest-tenured member of the team. Ray is promoted to Chief Warrant Officer 2 in season 4. From season 6 he serves as Bravo Team’s Officer-in-charge, and in the finale he takes a position as Head of Warfighter Health.
That arc is the show’s cleanest piece of writing. Ray moves from the guy beside Hayes to the guy above him, and the series does not pretend the shift is painless.
A. J. Buckley plays Chief Special Warfare Operator Percival “Sonny” Quinn, Bravo 3/3B, a loyal and sometimes volatile SEAL who is at his best in firefights and prefers them to a leadership position. Sonny makes Chief Petty Officer in season 7, then decides to retire from the Navy in the finale. Buckley got the part early — CBS reported on March 8, 2017, that he would play Sonny — and he is the show’s release valve. Sonny says the thing the room is thinking, badly, and the show lets him.
Toni Trucks plays Lieutenant Lisa Davis, who starts as a Logistics Specialist First Class, becomes an Ensign, and by season 3 is a DEVGRU Intelligence Officer assigned mainly to Bravo Team. In our view, Trucks is the series regular who spends the whole run translating between the operators and the institution. Her scenes are often the ones that explain why a mission is stupid, which is a service.
The Cast Changes That Kept Reshaping the Show
Max Thieriot plays Special Warfare Operator First Class Clay Spenser, Bravo 6/6B, a second-generation Navy SEAL training for Tier One status whose readiness for combat is openly questioned. He joins Bravo Team at the end of “The Exchange” and twice briefly serves as the team’s second-in-command. Thieriot is credited for seasons 1 through 6.
Jessica Paré plays Amanda “Mandy” Ellis, Bravo Team’s CIA liaison, for seasons 1 through 4, then recurs in seasons 5 through 7. After she gives up the location of a CIA asset in “My Life for Yours,” Mandy is demoted from her rank of officer and is now serving as an interrogator for the CIA.
Beau Knapp was cast as a series regular on December 12, 2023, for the seventh and final season, playing Drew Franklin. Judd Lormand played Commander, formerly Lieutenant Commander, Eric Blackburn, a series regular in seasons 2 through 4 and recurring after that; he was upgraded to series regular for season 2 on August 15, 2018.
Michael McGrady and Ruffin Prentiss would recur as Captain Harrington and Summer Kairos in the series’ second season. It was reported on July 10, 2019 that Jamie McShane and Rudy Dobrev were cast in recurring roles for the third season. Emily Swallow was cast in a recurring capacity for the third season on August 7, 2019. Shiva Negar joined the cast in a recurring role for the fourth season on January 27, 2021.
What SEAL Team Does Better Than Its Peers
The show’s central mechanic is not combat. It is the burden the job places on the operators and their families, and the fact that missions arrive with little notice. That is the engine, and when SEAL Team runs it, the series works.
The network move is part of the story. SEAL Team aired on CBS from September 27, 2017, to October 31, 2021. It then moved to Paramount+ for the remainder of its run. Whether the later seasons are better is arguable. In our view, they are more honest about what the show had always been.
Here is how the three longest-serving characters end up, and what the show asks of each:
| Character | Actor | Rank at the start | Where the finale leaves them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Hayes | David Boreanaz | Master Chief Special Warfare Operator, Bravo 1/1B | Still leading Bravo Team |
| Ray Perry | Neil Brown Jr. | Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator, Bravo 2/2B | Head of Warfighter Health |
| Sonny Quinn | A. J. Buckley | Chief Special Warfare Operator, Bravo 3/3B | Decides to retire from the Navy |
The table is the whole thesis. One man stays. One man climbs. One man leaves. The show spent seven seasons setting up those three exits and, in our assessment, only really earned one of them.
The Problem With Seven Seasons of the Same Mission
SEAL Team has a formula problem, and it is not a small one. The missions blur. A compound in one country looks like a compound in another. The show builds tension through procedure — the planning, the breach, the exfil — and procedure is only dramatic when the audience can tell the difference between this time and last time. Too often, it cannot.
The personal storylines carry more weight than the operations, which is an odd outcome for a series sold on the operations. Hayes’s marriage, Ray’s family, Sonny’s volatility, Davis’s position between the operators and the brass — those threads are what a viewer remembers. The missions are the frame, not the picture.
There is also the question of what the show is for. It is a military drama that largely accepts the institution’s account of itself. That is a legitimate choice, and SEAL Team makes it consistently. But it means the series has little to say about the cost of the wars it depicts beyond the cost to the men fighting them. The families are present. The politics are not.
The Verdict on SEAL Team
The published critical score is 5.7 out of 10, and it is not a dismissal. SEAL Team is a competent, occasionally excellent show that never became a great one. Boreanaz anchors it. Brown Jr. gives it a spine. Buckley gives it a pulse. Trucks gives it a conscience. The writing gives it a ceiling.
The series ran 112 episodes across seven seasons and two networks, which is a real achievement for a show this expensive and this logistically difficult. It also never solved its central problem: how to make the 90th mission feel different from the 89th. The finale, with Sonny out and Ray promoted, is a decent ending to a show that was always better at the aftermath than the assault.
Worth watching for the performances. Worth finishing for Ray Perry. Not worth pretending it was more than it was.
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