'SEAL Team' Ends Fifth Season (and Hopefully Not Series) on Major Cliffhanger

by Julian Spivey

Photo: Paramount

​“SEAL Team” just had to go and put a huge cliffhanger at the end of its season five finale “All Bravo Stations.” I hate when shows do this when they’ve been on the air this long and there’s a possibility they won’t be renewed for another season.

Granted, I have no clue what the renewal chances are for “SEAL Team” now that it’s airing on the Paramount+ streamer, but it was often up in the air when it aired on CBS. My guess is if the price is right and enough viewers followed the show to the streamer from CBS it will return, but I don’t have those answers.

A lot happens in the 49 minutes of “All Bravo Stations” and it’s basically told in three segments. The episode opens with the team finishing up its operation in Venezuela where they have imploded a nuclear site building at the end of the penultimate episode of the season. This operation seems to be wrapped up rather quickly, but then the team heads home where the bulk of the episode finds Jason (David Boreanaz), Sonny (A.J. Buckley), Clay (Max Thieriot) and Ray (Neil Brown Jr.) dealing with important things they left behind to complete their mission. Jason admits his head injury to his daughter and Mandy (Jessica Pare), whom he patches things up with. Clay finally gets to hold and name his son and gets to take him home. Ray is disturbed to find out the homeless vet he tried to help has committed suicide and is further committed to helping troubled vets. Sonny is dealing with his daughter and her mother leaving him and going back to Texas, while also trying all he can to patch up his friendship with Clay that was harmed greatly in South America.

I wish the show would spend a bit more time with these men at home, but even in episodes like this one that feature the home front quite a bit can’t help themselves but to immediately send our heroes back into the battle. I wouldn’t mind seeing an entire episode or even episodes given to life on the home front for these guys, but from viewer reviews I’ve read on websites like IMDb.com I might be in the minority on this. It seems many fans want episodes to be action packed all of the time.

So, it’s not long for Bravo team to be home before they’re called back into the fight, this time in Africa trying to take down an ISIS leader. Things are looking incredibly dire for our heroes at the end of the episodes as they’re outnumbered, taking fire, multiple members of the team are injured, and the enemy had fired RPGs at them as the smoke fills the air and the season (and hopefully not the series) ends.

If there is a season six of “SEAL Team” this was pretty much a perfect scene to end the season on. If the show winds up being canceled it’s a disappointing finish, but honestly not a real unrealistic one for soldiers, as sometimes this is how it all ends.