Raymond Cruz will always have one of television’s most instantly recognizable villain faces because of his character, Tuco Salamanca, in Breaking Bad. The wild eyes, the sudden violence, the terrifying switch from funny to fatal was a different vibe. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul made him unforgettable despite surprisingly little screen time. The other side of his TV career, meanwhile, is just as interesting, and with this show, which came three years before Breaking Bad, Cruz had already built a completely different kind of presence inside one of cable’s most dependable police-procedural universes.
That universe came from The Closer, a TNT hit built around Brenda Leigh Johnson’s (Kyra Sedgwick) ability to crack suspects through confession-heavy interrogation. When the parent show ended, the follow-up, instead of simply copying the same formula with a new lead, shifted the department’s rhythm. The cases still involved murders, high-profile investigations, and LAPD politics, but the new show leaned more into plea deals, cooperation agreements, unit dynamics, and longer serialized arcs.
That spin-off is Major Crimes, and all six seasons will stream free on Pluto TV beginning June 1, 2026. Cruz returns as Detective Julio Sanchez alongside Mary McDonnell, G.W. Bailey, Tony Denison, Michael Paul Chan, Phillip P. Keene, Robert Gossett, Jon Tenney, and Jonathan Del Arco, with Graham Patrick Martin’s Rusty Beck giving the spin-off its most personal long-running thread.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
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🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
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Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
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Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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Where Else Have You Seen Raymond Cruz
Raymond Cruz at SDCC 2025 for Aztec BatmanImage via Alex Cobian
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Cruz played Julio Sanchez in Major Crimes for 105 episodes from 2012 to 2018, giving him far more room than his explosive but brief Tuco Salamanca run for three episodes each in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. After that, his most notable TV project was Nova Vita, the 2021 drama built around powerful men, erased identities, and a secret organization selling second lives. Interestingly, Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) was also a part of that show, alongside Titus Welliver, Raymond Cruz, Michel Gill, and Robert Knepper. Since then, Cruz has not had another comparable series role, and his later credits lean more toward film roles.
Major Crimes will be available to stream for free on Pluto TV starting June 1, 2026. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Release Date
2012 – 2018-00-00
Network
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TNT
Directors
Stacey K. Black, Michael M. Robin, Anthony Hemingway, David McWhirter, James Duff, Jon Tenney, Rick Wallace, Steve Robin, Sylvain White
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Writers
Michael Alaimo, Adam Belanoff, Ralph Gifford, Carson Moore, Duppy Demetrius, Jim Leonard, Leo Geter
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