Chicago Hearth very quickly returns within the 2025 TV schedule with what is about to be a intense storyline for Joe Cruz after how the Season 13 fall finale unfolded again in November. Whereas that remaining episode of 2024 did not finish on an imminent life-or-death cliffhanger like Chicago Med did, Cruz’s previous comes again to hang-out him within the new yr… his very, very distant previous. Talking with CinemaBlend forward of the winter premiere on January 8, actor Joe Mińoso hyped what to anticipate as Chicago Hearth revisits Cruz’s very first large storyline from means again in Season 1.
As followers could bear in mind from again in November of the 2024 TV schedule (or a newer rewatch through a Peacock subscription), Cruz was being taunted by bullet-shaped pendants full of ashes, and he bought a clue of what was coming when Leon confirmed as much as warn him that Flaco’s cousin had been launched from jail. Sure, Cruz’s choice all these years in the past to let Flaco burn to dying to guard Leon is haunting him but once more, and it is a protected guess that no matter Junior has deliberate for the firefighter, it isn’t going to be good for him.
Not many exhibits final for 13 seasons, not to mention revisit a storyline properly over a decade later. (Flaco’s first look was in simply the ninth episode of Chicago Hearth‘s first season in 2012.) After I spoke with Joe Mińoso about whether or not he’d held out hope for the present to revisit what was the primary large arc for Cruz, he shared:
I do not know that I might given up hope on it. I feel it is simply a type of issues the place you retain transferring by life and also you simply overlook that that is a risk. I feel even for the writers… So few exhibits go this lengthy, and I feel it was so unimaginable of them to be that courageous, to recall one thing that outdated and determine a method to carry it again and make it contemporary and fascinating, and be capable of herald new followers to know what we’re doing and the way we’re monitoring all of that.
Rather a lot has definitely modified on Chicago Hearth over the twelve seasons since Cruz made that fateful choice about Flaco, starting from in-universe developments just like the character getting married and turning into a father to real-life shifts like Andrea Newman taking up as sole showrunner.
With each episode of Chicago Hearth up to now accessible streaming on Peacock now, it isn’t onerous to entry the early days of Firehouse 51. Mińoso went on to share what’s “totally ridiculous” in one of the best ways about revisiting Cruz’s Flaco storyline within the winter premiere:
It is a pleasure to have a job as an actor. It’s fairly exceptional and virtually unattainable to have one this lengthy, and so to have the ability to be speaking about issues like storylines that your character visited 12 years in the past, and we’re doing it once more, appears almost unattainable. Like, totally ridiculous. In order of proper now, I simply take into account it the best blessing of my life. It is unimaginable that that is what we’re doing, and that is what my life is.
In fact, even longtime followers might need a tough time remembering the specifics of a storyline that kicked off again in 2012. However did Joe Mińoso himself have an strategy to refreshing his reminiscence on the particulars of the primary meaty storyline for Joe Cruz? I requested the actor that very query, and he defined:
I went again and I rewatched the episodes that cope with that storyline, nevertheless it did not actually take a lot freshening. It’s important to perceive, I wasn’t a sequence common on the present at that time. I used to be only a visitor star, and I had barely accomplished something as an actor that anyone would know me in. This was the one largest storyline or position that had ever occurred to me. So it is very vivid in my thoughts.
Consider it or not, there was as soon as a time when Joe Mińoso – whose character is so pivotal these days – solely held visitor star standing on Chicago Hearth, so it is no marvel that Cruz’s first large arc has lingered with the actor all these years later. He continued:
I bear in mind so vividly the way it felt to have the hearth on my ears after I was deciding to shut the door on Flaco. And again then, we had been nonetheless doing burning embers. After we had been doing pictures, it was really, like actually hearth falling down from the sky on us. I’ve shot reminiscences, and it is actually vivid in my thoughts. So it did not take a lot to get again there.
Mińoso made it clear that getting “again there” was an thrilling alternative for him in Season 13; Cruz himself absolutely will not be so excited as his previous comes again to hang-out him. We will solely hope that Chloe and the youngsters are ignored of the mess! Sadly, the promo does not drop any particulars, though it does reassure that Severide shall be again after lacking the autumn finale. Have a look:
Watch On
Do not miss the winter premiere of Chicago Hearth Season 13 on Wednesday, January 8 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC, between Chicago Med at 8 p.m. ET and Chicago P.D. at 10 p.m. ET. All three exhibits have cliffhangers of kinds to cope with after how the autumn finales ended, so there could also be loads in retailer in One Chicago forward of the long-awaited crossover occasion.