‘S.W.A.T. Exiles’ Premiere Recap: Hondo’s New Team Has a Traitor
WARNING: This recap contains major spoilers for the S.W.A.T. Exiles series premiere, “Clean Entry.”
Hondo is back, but S.W.A.T. Exiles is not interested in pretending everything can just pick up where the original series left off. Two years have passed, a lot has changed, and Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson is carrying enough personal and professional baggage to make this comeback anything but simple.
When the premiere catches up with him, Hondo is working private security instead of leading a S.W.A.T. team. He has lost his mother, his marriage to Nichelle has fallen apart, and the fallout from a deadly operation still follows him long after he stepped away from the department.
So when Commander Hicks shows up with an offer to bring him back, Hondo is understandably hesitant. S.W.A.T. needs help, and Hicks wants him to take charge of a brand-new team made up of officers who have all been overlooked, passed over or written off, which sounds less like a dream assignment and more like somebody handing Hondo a problem and wishing him luck.
44 Squad Is Not 20 Squad
Hondo quickly learns that whatever worked with his old team is not automatically going to work here. Sammy is outspoken and constantly attached to her phone, Ethan is brilliant with technology but not exactly a social butterfly, Cassidy is determined to prove that her prosthetic leg does not limit what she can do, and Jude brings plenty of confidence into the room.
Malik seems different at first because he and Hondo share a military background, creating an immediate sense that the two might understand each other better than the rest of the group. That connection does not take long to get complicated once Malik starts questioning the way Hondo handles the team.
Hondo walks into the assignment expecting discipline and trust to come with the uniform, while his recruits want to know why they should trust him in the first place. That clash becomes the real heart of the premiere because Hondo is not simply rebuilding a team; he is learning that his leadership style needs some rebuilding too.
During a training exercise, Hondo deliberately makes the situation harder in an attempt to prepare the squad for the unexpected. Malik does not see it that way and calls him out for setting the team up to fail instead of teaching them how to succeed, which gives Hondo something he definitely was not expecting from one of his newest recruits.
Hondo does not exactly enjoy being challenged, but Malik’s criticism sticks with him. For all of Hondo’s experience, he has spent most of his career leading people who already believed in him, and this group has no reason to give him that kind of trust automatically.
Deacon Says What Hondo Needs to Hear
That is where Deacon comes in, and thankfully the premiere uses his return for more than a quick nostalgia moment. Deacon knows Hondo well enough to recognize what is happening and, more importantly, knows him well enough to tell him when he is the problem.
He reminds Hondo that 44 Squad is not a replacement version of 20 Squad. These officers think differently, respond differently and need something different from their commander, which means Hondo cannot keep expecting everyone else to change while he stays exactly the same.
That conversation shifts something in him, and once Hondo stops focusing on what the recruits are doing wrong, he starts looking more closely at why they were selected in the first place. That is when the whole setup begins looking suspicious, because every member of 44 Squad has something in their history that caused someone else to doubt them.
Hondo also has his own damaged reputation hanging over him, so putting all of them together starts to feel less like an opportunity and more like someone assembling the perfect group to blame when things inevitably go wrong. If that really was the plan, Hondo has no intention of making it easy for whoever put it together.
Hondo Gives the Team a Choice
Instead of hiding what he suspects, Hondo tells the recruits that there may be more going on behind the scenes than they realized. He gives them the chance to walk away before they get dragged deeper into whatever this is, but every member of the team chooses to stay.
That decision matters because not long after, 44 Squad gets its first real chance to prove itself during a mission involving a former cartel operative and his family. Suddenly, there are no training-room arguments and no time for anyone to worry about whether they belong, because they simply have to do the job.
The mission lets the premiere show why these particular recruits might actually work together despite all the reasons somebody apparently decided they would not. Ethan’s tech skills become useful in a way Hondo cannot ignore, the others begin trusting each other under pressure, and the team finally stops looking like five people fighting for individual validation.
They still have work to do, obviously, because nobody goes from dysfunctional new squad to elite unit in one episode.
Thankfully, the show does not pretend otherwise, and the bigger change comes from Hondo beginning to understand that the goal is not to turn 44 Squad into the team he used to have. Instead, he starts seeing what this group might become on its own. That shift gives the mission more weight than simply being the team’s first win, because it also marks the first time Hondo truly starts meeting them where they are.
Hondo’s Comeback May Have Been a Setup
Just as things begin looking slightly more promising, Hondo’s concerns about the circumstances surrounding his return refuse to go away. Too many pieces of this assignment feel intentional, and the deeper he looks, the less convinced he becomes that Hicks was really the person making all of these decisions.
Hondo knows Hicks, and some of what happened behind the scenes simply does not sound like him. That leaves one very obvious question hanging over the episode: who actually wanted Hondo back, and what exactly were they hoping would happen once he took control of 44 Squad?
If someone deliberately paired Hondo with a group of officers already considered risks, this may not be about rebuilding S.W.A.T. at all. It may be about creating a situation where Hondo fails publicly and takes the entire squad down with him, which would already be more than enough drama for one comeback.
Unfortunately for Hondo, the episode is not finished piling on the problems just yet. The biggest complication turns out to be much closer to him than he realizes.
Malik Has His Own Agenda
The final reveal changes the way we look at Malik completely. After spending the episode seemingly trying to earn his place on the squad, Malik secretly meets with a mysterious woman and makes it clear that his feelings about Hondo run much deeper than a disagreement over leadership.
Malik does not believe Hondo deserves his badge or his command, and he is apparently working to prove it. That revelation immediately makes all of his earlier pushback feel different, because while he may genuinely disagree with Hondo, there is clearly something much more personal driving him too.
Hondo has absolutely no idea that one of the people he just decided to trust is already working against him. The episode leaves plenty unanswered, including why Malik feels so strongly about Hondo and who exactly the woman helping him is, but it makes one thing very clear: this new squad has problems Hondo cannot even see yet.
That gives S.W.A.T. Exiles a strong starting point because the series is not simply recreating the old formula with new faces. Hondo is different, the team is different, and the trust that once came naturally to him now has to be earned from scratch.
Considering Malik is already moving behind his back in Episode 1, that trust may be the hardest thing Hondo has to build.
And if someone really did create 44 Squad expecting the whole thing to implode, Hondo may have walked back into S.W.A.T. carrying a target on his back without even realizing it.
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