Some of you might have seen it coming, but I am a completionist. For better or worse, that is who I am, and it goes beyond just finishing a show I have started. I also feel the need to finish all the reviews for 24, season by season, as promised. I don’t know why it’s simply a part of me. As you can deduce, I finished this entire show some time ago, but I still remember my feelings about each season. But before we get into it, let’s take a moment and talk about the 24: Redemption (2008).

And by “a moment”, I will give you a mini-review of this film between season six (my review here) and this season. Why is there a film in between these two seasons? Well, in 2007, there was a writer’s strike (kinda like the one that started now), and this movie came about instead of season seven which was delayed because of that strike. And as I mentioned in my review for season six, when I finally watched this movie, it was after the seventh season, so my review isn’t fair. Because I already knew the main players of season seven and how they fit into everything, watching it back was… fine. The African setting felt like a much-needed change, and it was as action-packed as you may expect from 24, but it might have worked better had I watched it before season seven. The overall story has very little impact on the series, except for the finale; however, if you are watching 24, watch it before you start season seven.

Now, let’s get into this season. If you name a TV cliché, chances are season seven of 24 will have it. Unfortunately, this show has fallen into the last trap of almost every show that goes on for some time, and that is bringing back “dead” characters. As in, “if you haven’t seen them die, they may not be dead” rule. Except in this show, they cheated because we saw that character die, except he didn’t… Ok, I will have to get into spoilers, so if you care enough, you have been warned.

Beware, SPOILERS are coming!

I truly hate that trend of characters coming back to life in any show, but this season, it was even worse because we saw Tony die. As Jack says at the beginning of this season, he saw him die, except, of course, he didn’t. I know they excused it vaguely, but it feels so cheap. And this whole spiel, whether he was good or bad, got boring quickly, to the point I literally didn’t care. As much as I liked his character in the past, he should have stayed dead; Tony felt out of place in this season.

The reason I feel like that is simple, I did enjoy most of this season otherwise. I liked Jack, Chloe and Bill working outside of government on their own because they don’t know who they can trust; I thought Tony Todd did a great job as the main antagonist of this season and didn’t even mind the president’s family subplot, showing her integrity and making the morally correct calls, despite how painful they were. And even though the latter half of this season was a bit “wild” (from the attack on the White House to Kim’s involvement at the end), you can still enjoy yourself in most of these scenarios. I also liked Annie Wersching‘s character Renee Walker; I thought she was a great counterforce to Jack. It’s a shame we lost her at the beginning of 2023 to cancer 46 years is awfully young to go.

Back to this season as a whole, out of all 24, this was the most mediocre one ever. And having seen all seasons now, I can assure you both season eight and the special Live Another Day (technically, season nine, but only had 12 episodes) had their issues, but neither felt so average after I finished them. And I need to go back to the core issue, not only bringing Tony back but making him and his “is he a good guy or not” dynamic almost the centre point of this season bothered me. Had he stayed dead, and we would have focused more on the corruption within the government, building the relationship between Jack and Renee, this season would have been much better.

Overall, the seventh season of 24 is the lowest this series has ever been and will ever be. It is still a perfectly fine action-packed show that won’t bore you much, but your enjoyment will be heavily impacted by whether or not you can enjoy the “let’s bring this dead character back” trope. Some of you may be happy to see Tony back, and I can’t blame you. To an extent, I envy you that you may see this as a plus. Sadly, I can’t, and this effectively killed most of the enjoyment for this season, and I was coming from an already shaky sixth season.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke