SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 Review: The Sea And The Hills

Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

4.5

And here we are. SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 is the penultimate hour, setting up everything for the series’s swan song. Did it do the work?

I think so.

It’s not easy to say goodbye to a team as close as Bravo. Looking back at the series as a whole, the Bravo team has been and remains the main attraction. They feel like family.

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

But this family is coming to an end, at least in its current incarnation. What comes next will exclude us, so everything is riding on the SEAL Team finale.

Please note that I have seen the finale, so this review will be a little different. I’m not going to speculate, as I don’t want to give anything away. That’s the last thing I would want for those of us who have spent so much time with Bravo.

SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 began as we’d expect, with everyone wondering what in the hell Ross Curtis was doing right in the middle of an Op.

He wasn’t on any sanctioned business, and that struck the team hard.

Curtis and Nazario go back years, it seems. No wonder he’s such a miserable POS. How can you work with the enemy after spending a lifetime defending your country from them?

Sonny said it best. “Never trust a ginger.” That’s something I can say as I was ginger for many of my years! 🤣

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

As you’d expect, this hit Jason particularly hard. This guy, who they had trusted, turned on the fentanyl faucet. Timing is everything, and Jason’s reaction made it clear that the time was up for this particular bunch of drug traders.

He told us exactly who he is — a man so contaminated by war, he can’t ever escape it.

— Jason Hayes

As we discussed during SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 8, they let this guy get into their heads, especially Jason. He saw Curtis as a role model, someone who had been through the same shit as he had. If he couldn’t get out, why could Jason?

And finally, like in the old days, Ray recognized there was more to Jason’s story and wondered if it was Curtis who was redecorating the inside of his head. That pushed Jason to tell Ray about the burn box and his first kill.

Jason needs to do what he envies Ray for doing — clean his kills and settle his debts so he can walk away healthy. With one episode remaining on on his way to kill a fellow frogman, it’s hard to imagine how he can accomplish that.

You know, I though dying on the battlefield was the worst thing that could happen to me. You know what A dead man don’t feel no shame.

— Jason Hayes

One of the most important aspects of the upcoming finale is concluding Jason’s story. Talking about dying on the battlefield suggests that it could go either way.

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

Another sign that the family is breaking up comes from Stella. She and Sonny, while not together on screen much during SEAL Team Season 7, have remained in each other’s lives.

So, it was a shock to Sonny that she’d found a new direction. She needed to get out of her space with Clay, but Sonny promised Clay he would take care of his family.

The timing was terrible for Sonny, who had just “lost” Leanne and was now losing Stella and Brian, too.

Still, he laid it on a little thick with Lisa about his trident. On the one hand, he says he’d take a bullet for her, but on the other, he reminds her that the only thing he’s clinging to is holding on to his trident.

Did he not recognize how antsy she was during the whole op? Her future is just as important to her as his is to him. And when you look at it from the male-female perspective, what she’s achieved trumps his Navy career.

These two are going to keep us guessing to the bitter end.

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

Of course, Sonny wasn’t the only one feeling pain on SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9.

Jason’s soon-to-be son-in-law tore his meniscus during training, which was just one more thing for Jason to worry about.

Being a family man so far from home is never easy, but as you get older and realize time isn’t neverending, it gets even harder.

It’s taken a whole season to get here, but SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 carried on the tradition of action we craved, even if it did almost get them “blasted off their asses.”

Omar: You do that shit again, Jason, I will kill you myself, man.

Drew: All balls and no brains, Master Chief.

Jason: This GPS is gonna tell us something.

Ray: All balls and some brains.

Sonny: That’s the Bravo One we know and love.

Drew doesn’t dig the way Jason says one thing and does another, but Jason knows he’s carrying Echo the same way Jason carries the names of 40 people he killed on his cell phone. Uh, is that healthy?

Had that tidbit been revealed before? I can’t imagine that’s something Jason shares with many people. If the brass knew how tightly he held on to every kill, they might (rightfully) question his readiness for the job.

That kind of guilt can wear a hole right into your soul, which is the essence of what Jason has been struggling with the whole season.

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

For Ray’s last op, it was nonstop action and excitement with a healthy dose of emotional turmoil. If he was worried about saying goodbye, this is as good of a sendoff as he could have wished for, assuming they all make it out alive.

Sonny: It’s a hell of a retirement party.

Ray: A cake would have been just fine.

SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 was full of surprises.

Amidst all of this and in the middle of their last op as a full Bravo team, Jason is called away to assassinate Curtis.

I suppose all assassins work alone, probably for good reason. But this is a military-sanctioned hit, so it doesn’t make sense to ask Jason to leave his team behind to do it.

Ray: This seems wrong, us splittin’ up on our last op.

Jason: Come on, man. If Hall and Oates couln’t stick together, what chance did we have, Ray, right?

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

Splitting up the team on Ray’s last op was especially cruel, but Jason chalked it up to everyone seeing right through him to the man he believes himself to be — a killer with so much blood on his hands that taking out a fellow frogman wouldn’t be any skin off of his nose.

Look, Ray. This is who I am. Understand? That’s why they chose me to pull the trigger. I need you watchin’ your teammates back one last time, alright? Get ’em home safe.

— Jason Hayes

But then, Drew pulled himself off the op to join Jason. Is that kind of thing allowed? Jason had direct orders to take down Curtis. Would Drew be left holding the bag if the public got wind of the assassination?

If he thought about it, Drew didn’t care.

He tried so hard not to care about Bravo, but he does now. He wasn’t going to send Jason off into the dark on his own, unprotected. Not again.

(Pablo Arellano Spataro/Paramount+)

Honestly, I really didn’t like Drew’s addition or how his backstory unfolded, but this having Jason’s back thing and looking up to him as a leader works. It’s exactly what they both needed.

Drew can look up to him when he thinks so little of himself. Jason trusts Drew when he feels he has let his team down. It all makes sense now, even if it was tough going earlier in the season.

Keeping with the tradition of my favorite part of this explosive series, SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 faded to black without answers.

Nazario was caught, so maybe that means the rest of the team will join him and Drew to take out Curtis.

It would be tough since the location was a tad remote, but seeing the benefits of them all in it together for such a drastic would outweigh the negatives.

( Trae Patton/Paramount+)

All in all, SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 9 set up the finale nicely.

There were very few scratch-your-head moments. Emotions were just as intense as the action, and where they filmed felt true to where they were fighting.

I may be talking with showrunner Spencer Hudnut before the finale, as well as David Boreanaz. If you’ve got burning questions, let me know about them in the comments.

But more than that, give me your best guess about what’s ahead for the finale. Did “The Sea And The Hills” do a good job of setting it up?

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