SEAL Team Makes a Major Move Mid-season

The action-packed Global favourite jumps to a streaming platform mid-season

The heroes of SEAL Team typically stay on the move, but they’re about to be redeployed to uncharted territory.

The military thriller remains on CBS to start its fifth season this Sunday… but after four weeks, it will move to corporate-cousin streaming service Paramount+, with its first new episode there dropping on November 1st. As of press time, we don’t know what that will mean for Canadian viewers, as the show won’t air on Global after that date, but also hasn’t been confirmed for Paramount+ Canada.

Either way, it’s nigh unprecedented for a network drama to make the jump to a streaming service midway through a season, and it’s fair to wonder: what kind of impact will its new home have on the content of SEAL Team?

After lobbying hard for the show to continue following a fourth season that ended with it very much “on the bubble” at CBS, star David Boreanaz vows that the saga of this elite military unit will remain faithful to the show its fans have known, while continuing to up the ante.

“Being in this business for so long, I know that you never rest your laurels on what you’ve laid down,” he says. “You’ve constantly got to demand more of yourself to get a better show, and this is a big pivot for us. It shows the commitment that CBS has to the show, moving it to a platform that quite honestly is very dominant in today’s watching habits. I’m happy with what’s being done.”

With co-stars Max Thieriot, Neil Brown, Jr., A.J. Buckley and Toni Trucks also staying (Canadian Jessica Paré left the regular cast in season four), the new SEAL Team season opens Sunday with part one of a two-part story that sends the squad on a supposed training exercise, but it turns out to be an actual mission to retrieve a weapons expert.

“I was excited to see that there is not one gunshot in the first two episodes,” Boreanaz says of the tale. “It’s an interesting journey that we have, and it shows the resilience and great, strong development of the characters.”

“One thing that attracted me so highly to this show in the beginning,” the actor adds, “was that there was just a blank canvas there. [His character Jason Hayes] wasn’t written on the page, and I was able to bring him to life and really find the avenue to do that along with the writers. It’s important to find what audiences want to get involved with, and for me, that’s always been character. And that takes time; you can’t just do it overnight.”

The son of a now-retired television legend in the Philadelphia and Buffalo markets, Boreanaz is nearing his 25th anniversary of constant TV drama employment, which began in 1997 with three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, straight into five seasons of the Boreanaz-headlined Buffy spinoff Angel, then 12 seasons of crime dramedy Bones and now SEAL Team. But as the actor sees it: “I know it all could be gone tomorrow, so you just have to work on today… put your head down and just do the work. That’s all I’m really concerned about, and everything else takes care of itself.”

SEAL Team airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Global & CBS