Spoilers ahead for the Season 13 winter premiere of Chicago Fire, called "A Favor" and available streaming now with a Peacock subscription.
Chicago Fire ended 2024 by revisiting the decision that Joe Cruz made back in 2012 that has come back to haunt him: letting Flaco burn to death to try and protect his brother Leon. Well, Flaco's cousin Junior entered the Squad firefighter's life to blackmail him into helping steal a bunch of money back from some other criminals. Unsurprisingly, the attempted heist went sideways, and Cruz ended the episode bleeding from a gunshot wound to the arm.
All in all, not a great start to the 2025 TV schedule for Cruz! Watching the winter premiere reminded me of what Joe Mińoso told CinemaBlend about what scares his character after all these years... and how his comments made me wonder if the situation would be better or worse for Cruz if Jesse Spencer came back around as Matt Casey.
First things first!
What Trouble Cruz Is In After "A Favor"
Despite Cruz's best efforts to get rid of Junior without blowing his own life up, Flaco's cousin wasn't so easily deterred from his plan to use Cruz's status with the CFD to get them access to a stash house and attempt to steal money for Junior's family now that he's out of prison. It was a plot worthy of Chicago P.D., but Cruz didn't exactly have one of the Intelligence Unit's handy bulletproof vests.
Junior proved to Cruz that he wasn't messing around by getting OFI to take a look back at Flaco's death (with Severide recruited to work with OFI for a while), and then got more direct when he pulled a gun on the firefighter. Junior wasn't the one to shoot Cruz, but he did take a bullet in the firefight, and the flesh wound might not be his only problem.
Cruz walked into the situation by identifying himself as a CFD firefighter, not covering his face. He wasn't even wearing gloves to avoid leaving his fingerprints all over the place. That was bad enough, and then the poor man was shot and could well have left a blood trail full of crime scene DNA behind! Plus, that gunshot wound to the arm isn't exactly something he can just slap a band-aid on, and asking the Firehouse 51 paramedics and/or Chicago Med doctors for help would lead to questions that he presumably won't want to answer.
All in all, after all of the trouble that Cruz found himself in, the least surprising twist of the episode was that Cruz didn't pick up Chloe's call at the end of the hour, because he was in no way ready to have that conversation with his wife. As one last emotional blow, the call to his cell phone revealed that Chloe, Javi, and baby Otis were his lock screen.
Joe Mińoso delivered an excellent performance, particularly in that last scene in the car, and Junior's death in the winter premiere in theory means that Cruz is at least out of danger of being blackmailed. Based on what the actor told CinemaBlend, though, the story isn't over after Episode 9.
What Joe Mińoso Says Terrifies Cruz And Could Be Different With Casey
I was fortunate enough to speak with Joe Mińoso during NBC's One Chicago winter premiere junket about how "fully ridiculous" it is for Chicago Fire to revisit this Cruz arc from the very first season. Noting that Cruz has a lot more to lose now in Season 13 than he did twelve years ago, I asked the actor if that motivated Cruz's actions in this storyline, and he shared:
That's what's at the front of his mind. Firefighters have this weird kind of bone in their body that most people don't where they're not really afraid to put themselves in harm's way. They sort of feed off of that adrenaline. I think what does terrify Cruz is the potential of something happening to his family, whether that be his firehouse family, but more importantly, his current actual nuclear family. Because, like you said, the stakes are so much higher for him now that we're revisiting the storyline than they were 12 years ago, when it was just about him and his brother.
Cruz's family has faced its share of challenges over the years, ranging from Chloe's uncertainty about whether she could handle being the wife of somebody who risks his life on a daily basis to the process of adopting Javi to having baby Otis in the wake of his best friend's death. The Flaco situation resurfacing puts them in real physical danger, and it doesn't seem like the storyline is over just because Junior is dead, as Mińoso went on:
So I think he'll go to any lengths. I think Cruz would do literally anything to save his family, and so you're gonna see just how far he's willing to go in Episode 9 and 10.
Episode 10 will air on Wednesday, January 15, so apparently fans have not yet seen just how far he'll go before the storyline wraps up. Whether it wraps before the three-part crossover event with Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med is another question to ponder, but NBC's description for the next episode – called "Chaos Theory" – reveals that Severide will have to investigate one of his own Squad members, and something tells me that the Squad member isn't Capp or Tony.
So, what does Casey have to do with any of this, when Jesse Spencer hasn't appeared on Chicago Fire since his guest appearance for the Brettsey wedding last season? Well, Casey's second wedding got a shout out in the winter premiere as running up the tab at Molly's after their fancier plans fell apart. More importantly, Joe Mińoso mentioned the former Truck Captain when I asked if Cruz had anybody he could confide in about the Flaco/Junior mess:
No. [laughs] First of all, no one in the firehouse at this point, except for maybe Mouch, has an idea of this ever happening. Jesse Spencer [as] Casey was the one who he really tried to confess to and really knows, but he's long gone. The new people in the firehouse have no clue, and I think he wants to keep it that way. It's going to be especially difficult for him and Severide, because Severide is incredibly nosy and intuitive, and so he's going to notice something's up there, and it's going to be really hard on Cruz to try and figure out how to avoid that completely and not get himself in even more hot water.
Would it be better for Cruz if he had Casey on hand as a potential confidant? Perhaps, and it's a fun question to consider in light of how Chicago Fire has never closed the door on Jesse Spencer dropping in and out from time to time. On the whole, I'm guessing that Cruz having to keep so many secrets will be part of what clues Severide into the fact that something is very wrong with his right-hand man on Squad, and that at least might have been different if Casey hadn't left the Windy City. I just can't help but wonder!
Unfortunately – and unusually – Chicago Fire didn't air a promo for the next episode at the end of the winter premiere, so we can only speculate uninformed about Cruz's situation after being shot. For now, you can just keep tuning in to NBC on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET for new episodes of Fire, between Chicago Med (which got "down and dirty" to start the new year) at 8 p.m. ET and Chicago P.D. at 10 p.m. ET. You can also find all three shows streaming now on Peacock.
