SEAL Team XL Final Season Premiere Recap: Did ‘Die Hard in a Swedish Mall’ Save Bravo’s Bacon?

Bravo Team was very much in the doghouse when Paramount+’s SEAL Team kicked off its final season on Sunday. But by the end of the double-episode premiere, had impromptu heroic actions earned them a trip back into the field?

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The first episode of Season 7 found Bravo several months into forced shore duty, after embarrassing Command at the close of the Season 6 finale. Ray is pushing papers for DEVGRU. Sonny is helping out Stella with Brian. And Jason has sneaked across the country to spend some quality time with Emma and Mikey, and help the former move into a new place with Brad.

Lisa meanwhile has been tasked with reading in some peers on the elevated importance of integrated deterrence strategies, but she is met with pushback — namely from a Lt. Cmdr. Kirkpatrick, who questions among other things her experience.

Bravo is very restless, so Jason confronts Captain Walch (Dylan Walsh) and offers to give up his Trident in trade for his teammates resuming ops. Instead, Bravo is sent to Sweden for a stretch to train some SOGs (Swedish Special Operations Task Group) — and a fellow misfit toy named Drew Franklin (Beau Knapp) is assigned to join them.

En route to Sweden, Bravo does its best to fold in Drew, but he dismisses them as a problem that Command wants hidden on a shelf. Once on the ground, Jason & Co. learn that Drew has a side hustle, training the SOGs on the side (passing off Rambo movie moves as non-standard SEAL tactics). Jason lays down the law and makes Drew contribute his wad of krona to a team excursion. There, at a local cafe, Sonny and Drew begin to get in each other’s faces when an explosion rocks the neighborhood. Bravo swings into action to scope out the scene, finding the signs of a car bomb just as they hear AK fire echoing inside the nearby mall.

Episode 2 of the final season picks up with Jason sharply and quickly tasking Ray and Omar with tending to the wounded, while he, Sonny, Drew, Brock and Pepper stealthily breach the mall, unarmed, to at least size up the sitch. When the local cops arrive, Ray reports to Jason that the Swedes want to wait for their tactical ops team. Jason, Sonny, Drew and Brock then set out to usher stray shoppers to safety, while taking stock of the shooters on hand. Desperately in need of any firepower, they sic Pepper on one shooter and then take him out with a headshot after grabbing his pistol. Sonny then takes out another shooter from an escalator with an acquired AK, after which he, Brock and Pepper manage to take out a third shooter.

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Jason meanwhile comes across a wounded merchant, and ducks into a shop to find the man’s hiding children. Jason stashes the kids behind a partition when a fourth shooter comes to sweep the shop. Jason tackles the guy and a prolonged bit of close-quarters combat follows, with Jason using a knife to slash the guy. Still, it’s a pretty even match-up, until Jason presses the guy into a corner and uses the blade to gut his throat. As the bogie slumps to the floor in a sea of blood, Jason is clearly shook — so much so that he fails to mind his six as the final shooter is about to get the drop on him from the doorway. But Drew takes the guy out from across the way, with a 40-yard pistol shot.

Omar and Ray keep busy outside all this time, with the former doing his best to save both a critically wounded mother and her young daughter (though only the kid survived). Ray meanwhile liaisoned with the Swedes, learning from a shooter’s walkie that a car bomb was on the way! Omar, Ray and an arriving Sonny and Brock hustled to form a “force field” of cars/trucks around the rows and rows of wounded civilians, and then used their acquired rifles to take out the driver. Then, by pushing one last car into the wayward VBIED’s path, they kept the explosion from reaching the wounded.

Word of Bravo’s heroism spreads back home, interrupting Lisa’s latest locking of horns with Kirkpatrick et al. Alas, Jason & Co are not ordered back into action, but called home to resume mundane shore duty. On the ride back, Drew is still a bit prickly, yet surprises Sonny by gifting him with one of those fine “Swedish” time pieces he covets (pinched from the mall). And once back home, Jason eventually confides in Mandy how being unexpectedly thrust back into action rattled him a bit, and has him questioning his future in new ways.

Elsewhere, Sonny showed up at the hearing for Ben, the veteran that Clay was helping when he tragically got gunned down by a skittish mall cop, and gave testimony that Clay would not want this guy punished for vandalism… and Lisa, emboldened by Blackburn, found a new angle with Kirkpatrick and his cronies, saying that Command wants her to succeed, and it’s in their political interests to share in the future kudos.

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