CHICAGO FIRE: Joe Miñoso Previews Cruz's Attempt to Keep Firehouse 51 in the Dark About Junior - Give Me My Remote : Give Me My Remote

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CHICAGO FIRE: Joe Miñoso Previews Cruz’s Attempt to Keep Firehouse 51 in the Dark About Junior

January 21, 2025 by  

Chicago Fire Chaos Theory preview

CHICAGO FIRE — “Chaos Theory” Episode 13010 — Pictured: (l-r) — (Photo by: Elizabeth Sisson/NBC)

Junior’s (Richard Cabral) attempt to blackmail CHICAGO FIRE’s Cruz (Joe Miñoso) in the winter premiere took a tragic, fatal twist.

In exchange for keeping quiet about Cruz’s role in the death of Junior’s cousin, Falco (José Antonio García)—when Cruz let the gang leader die in order to protect the firefighter’s younger brother—Junior wanted help stealing back a stash from a rival gang leader. (The plan? They enter the building as firemen.)

Though they were able to get access by Cruz claiming there was a nearby gas leak they had to inspect, the lookout man was suspicious…and Junior was ultimately recognized. A shootout occurred, leaving Junior dead and Cruz wounded with a gunshot.

Given the tight-knit nature of Firehouse 51, keeping this a secret from his fellow team members in the Wednesday, January 22 episode, “Chaos Theory,” won’t be easy.

“Oh, avoidance, absolutely,” Miñoso tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “Severide especially in the last two years has given Cruz a great amount of responsibility on Squad, and he really relies on him to sort of be him when he’s not there. And this is a failure for Cruz, I think, on so many fronts. Obviously, from a professional perspective, but also just from a human perspective. He’s so caught up in a world that is so incredibly dangerous.”

“And for Severide, who is incredibly perceptive—let’s not forget this is the Fire Cop—he catches everything,” he continues. And with the post-shootout injury, “that’s going to make it very obvious that something has gone wrong. And that is going to be on Cruz to try and keep that from Severide, but Severide is sniffing it down the whole time.”

Cruz also has another difficulty to contend with: After years of working for Boden, new Firehouse 51 leader Chief Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) is still a wild card, both individually and how he might react to one of his firefighters going rogue.

“One hundred percent, I think that’s an excellent point,” Miñoso says of its impact on Cruz. “Pascal also is somebody who…what’s been really fascinating for me the whole season has been how it really has been sort of an education of the individual characters for Pascal on the show, which has also been a great kind of reintroduction to who we all are as characters on the show. So, really, kudos to the writers for building that narrative throughout the season. And it’s Cruz’ turn. And this is the worst possible thing to be the thing that Pascal gets to know you for.”

“You’re going to see a lot of Cruz trying to kind of hide and deny and sort of avoid Pascal in episode 10,” he continues. “But I think that that really does come off in a really beautiful way in that episode. It was such a joy. Like, you realize Dermot Mulroney is on our show, right? I remember telling my wife, so she just about stopped breathing. And it’s amazing to be working with someone who I’ve admired and watched in so many things throughout so many years. And he is just as lovely as you would think.” 

Though the duo have shared group scenes together, the storyline in “Chaos Theory” “was my first real scene with Dermot,” Miñoso points out. “And there’s nothing better than looking in the eye of another actor and doing a scene and just kind of knowing and just getting [it] and clicking. That was such a special moment for me, just in my career in general, but for the episode, specifically.”

CHICAGO FIRE, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC

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