SWAT season 7 episode 10 recap: Tan is up for a new job as a sniper terrorizes LA

With just a small handful of episodes left of season 7, SWAT has been closing out some storylines that we have seen play out, such as Deacon’s retirement, and also giving us a clue where we can see the characters ending up. Season 7, episode 10, "SNAFU," did just that in addition to finding the team looking for a sniper targeting people in LA.

The sniper's first victim was a lawyer and the other victims turn out to be three members of a gang known as the Hammers. The team determined the connection pretty quickly. The three men were arrested for the murder of college student Samantha Leonard.

She lived near a stash house that some gang members raided and she was killed by a stray bullet. However, there was no evidence the men were involved themselves and the charges were dropped. The team learned that her father, Elijah, was a former Navy seal and has experience as a sharp shooter.

While the team went to locate him, Tan and Cabrera went to make sure another possible target was safe. Just when they thought that they were in the clear, shots were fired. Tan had seen the shooter thanks to his SWAT training and was able to protect their next victim before they tried to find the shooter.

Even though it appeared Elijah was innocent, surveillance cameras helped the team identify Hector Vance, who is Samantha’s godfather. It's likely that he and Elijah were working together to take out members of the crew they believed to be responsible for Samantha’s death.

Hondo went to Leroy for help with communicating with Khalif, the leader of the Hammers. He was part of the raid on the stash house so Hondo tried to warn him that the shooters would be after him. Khalif refused to back down, believing they would be able to take care of the shooters themselves.

Eventually, Elijah and Hector made another move by going after Khalif’s sister in order to bring him out of hiding. Khalif thought he was trailing them but it was the other way around. While Vance held Khalif’s sister hostage, Elijah began shooting.

With SWAT unable to locate him, the team tried to keep Khalif and his men from being shot as well as worked to get into the house to protect his sister. They took Vance out as Hondo made contact with Elijah through a radio Vance had on him.

Cabrera was able to figure out where Elijah was located just as he began targeting civilians to try to make SWAT hand Khalif over. They shot him and it was finally over.

Throughout the episode, we also got some side plots with the other characters. Powell and Alfaro were taking part in a game of SWAT tag in order to obtain concert tickets. Even though Alfaro won, he gave the tickets to Powell. He remembered that she mentioned her son really liked the musician, and she wanted to take him to the concert.

Alfaro also mentioned he was thinking of moving to Squad 20. He has been a good help to the team when they needed him, and he could be a good fit. 

Tan was also given the offer to run SWAT Academy in Deacon’s place, but he wasn’t sure at first. He didn’t think he was in the same league yet as Hondo and Deacon. However, Deacon told him that he shouldn’t doubt his abilities, which helped a lot on the case itself, hearing from Cabrera that learning from him gave her the tools she needed to help figure out where Elijah was.

He decided to take over the Academy, but Deacon left his badge before he could see how well Tan was doing. Is this officially Deacon’s last case with the team?

Tune in to SWAT on Fridays on CBS at 8/9c. You can also catch up on previous episodes on Paramount+.