‘S.W.A.T.’ Season 7 Finale Teased by Shemar Moore

S.W.A.T. is the little engine that could, but with big ratings and a fan base that refuses to let it go. The show has been canceled, and the decision has been reversed, twice. Initially, CBS announced in 2023 that the series was canceled, with Season 6 supposed to be the end, before the network reversed its decision opting to renew for a seventh and final season. But Shemar Moore believed there was more story to tell. CBS uncanceled the show again amid fan and cast backlash and announced that now its eighth season would be its final one. 

Moore, who leads the show as Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson and serves as a producer, has been celebrating the show’s renewal and teased the Season 7 finale while at the CBS Fall Schedule Celebration in Hollywood. “We were smart,” Moore told Deadline, noting the Season 7 finale was treated as if it could have been the end of the series. 

“At the tail end of the strike, me and the producers and the writers got together at my house and I said, ‘OK, what are we going to do this year?’ I said, ‘If this is it, let’s go out with a bang. Let’s give them our signature. Let’s give them the action: helicopters, chase scenes, motorcycle chases, fight scenes, Hondo sprinting through an alley. Let’s rock them,’” he said happily.

He added, “We have three episodes left to finish [airing] this season. So when you get to the finale, you’ll see we shaped it in a way that it’s either our swan song or our new beginning. We literally didn’t change anything in the writing.”

As for why the show works, Moore told PopCulture.com in a 2022 interview: “We love that we’re a thrill ride, an action show. You get to see cops do super cool things that really go [on] in real life – from helicopter chases, and repelling off of buildings, and motorcycle chases and car chases, hand to hand combat, chasing down the bad guys, and the explosions, edge of your seat fun stuff. But we also stay grounded in current topics.”