Why Jerry Edgar From Bosch Looks So Familiar

"Bosch," Amazon's hit cop drama about unpredictable LAPD detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) based on the novels by author Michael Connelly, is returning for its seventh and final season on June 25 (but don't worry, Bosch will be back in an as-yet-untitled spinoff that sounds like it's going to be a very similar show with Bosch doing a slightly different investigative job in the private sector). Season 7 will find Bosch dealing with his toughest case yet, along with the fallout from what happened last season with his partner Jerry Edgar, affectionately known as J. Edgar. 

J. Edgar is a stylish, capable detective who acts as a by-the-book foil to the rule-bending Bosch – most of the time. Season 6 saw him go vigilante and murder Haitian drug kingpin Jacques Avril (Treva Etienne), as he knew Avril was going to kill again and would get away with it thanks to being under government protection, after he'd already gotten away with committing atrocities in Haiti, and killing J. Edgar's uncle. Bosch covered up the murder for him.

J. Edgar is played by an actor who is most famous for playing a character on the other side of the law. Ever since that breakthrough role in the early 2000s, the actor has been a familiar presence on TV and in movies. His name is his name, and that name is Jamie Hector. Here's where else you've seen him besides "Bosch."

Jamie Hector is best known for his iconic performance as ambitious and cold-blooded young gang leader Marlo Stanfield on HBO's "The Wire," one of TV's all-time best shows. On the crime series, Stanfield sought to control the drug trade in West Baltimore, and went to war with Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and his crew over the best territory. Stanfield's ruthlessness and all-consuming need for respect made him extreme even by the standards of the violent criminals on the show. He had a recurring slogan that expressed how the most important thing to him was his reputation: "My name is my name."

In an interview with Next TV, Hector talked about the differences between Marlo Stanfield and Jerry Edgar, and how he approaches playing them, which involves taking their whole life stories into account. "Not just the moments before or the day before -– it was their lifetime before that led up to the moment their stories began. They were created by their environments: Marlo saw his mother sleeping with a different man every night, and he slept on the floor. Jerry slept in his own bed, and he had the protection of his family who sang 'Happy Birthday' to him and made sure he had everything he needed. Marlo's life was built on lack and survival -– he's going to get what he needs by any means necessary –- if that means respect, money, whatever he needs at that time, so be it. Jerry's was built on access, protection and service."

After "The Wire" ended in 2008, Hector took Marlo Stanfield's bad guy swag into the realm of the superhuman, joining the cast of the NBC's ill-fated superhero ensemble drama "Heroes" in Season 3. He played Benjamin "Knox" Washington, a criminal with the ability to absorb other people's fear and use it to fuel his super-strength. Knox was a gang member from Los Angeles who escaped from the Level 5 prison for dangerous "evolved individuals" –- what "Heroes" called people with superpowers -– and went on a mission to get revenge against the people he felt wronged him and put him in prison. Later, he was hired by the nefarious Pinehearst Corporation to help capture other "evos."

After Knox died on the show, he was the subject of a series of prequel webisode shorts (actually deleted scenes that didn't make it into an earlier episode) that told the story of how Knox discovered his superpower.

Jamie Hector is most known for his TV work, but he's done some film work also. One of his most notable film roles was Mutulu Shakur, rapper Tupac Shakur's Black revolutionary stepfather, in the biopic "All Eyez on Me." Mutulu Shakur is currently serving a lengthy federal prison sentence for his role in a 1981 armored truck robbery in which a guard and two police officers were killed.

In an interview with Ebony, Hector compared Mutulu's role in Tupac's life to the biblical King David in Solomon's, offering guidance and hard-earned wisdom. He never met Mutulu Shakur, but in preparing for the role and playing him he learned from him, about the value of taking the responsibility of caring for your community into your own hands rather than waiting for outside help to arrive. "He opened up an acupuncture service for the community [...] when heroin and crack was dropped on Harlem in the '70s, and people turned their back on the area," Hector explained. "So he opened an acupuncture facility to service the people. He took it into his own hands to do that because if left to everyone else to help the community, they would be ignored. So I learned that sometimes you just have to do it yourself. If you constantly sit down and think about how you're going to execute something, you're never going to execute it."

Jamie Hector has pulled TV double duty during his time on "Bosch," recurring over several seasons on the USA cartel drama "Queen of the South" as genteel, CIA-affiliated cartel buyer Devon Finch. Finch was more like Marlo Stanfield's rival Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) than Hector's "The Wire" character, a sophisticated businessman with a diversified portfolio of criminal and legitimate revenue streams. In the final season, he was one of Teresa Mendoza's (Alica Braga) main enemies, working with the CIA to bring her down.

Finch survived to the end of "Queen of the South," which recently ended after five seasons, which surprised some fans, who were expecting him to get what was coming to him. Showrunners Benjamin Lobato and Dailyn Rodriguez explained to Deadline that they had originally planned to bring Finch back if the show was renewed for Season 6, and when they found out the show was canceled they decided to "let sleeping dogs lie" and not tie his story up with a bow.