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Justin Hartley‘s hit series Tracker keeps proving that there’s nothing our favorite hero Colter Shaw wouldn’t do to solve a case involving a teenage girl — and a triple homicide.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from the Sunday, April 19, episode of the CBS show, Colter is looking around a dark room for clues when he notices a suspicious man approaching the area.
“Someone is out there,” he tells a detective before sprinting off into the woods. “I got this, you call for backup.”
Colter chases the man through the woods until he is finally able to tackle him. The survivalist then pushes the guy to tell him the location of a missing girl. According to the synopsis for the episode, Colter “is hired to find a teen girl who went missing from a friend’s house during a tragic triple homicide.”
Based on Jeffery Deaver‘s novel The Never Game, Tracker centers around Colter, who travels the country helping to find missing people (or sometimes dogs) and solving cases others couldn’t or wouldn’t. Hartley, 49, is also an executive producer and has hinted at how far the show will push his character.
“I just love that when you watch a show like that and you tune into season 1 and then you tune into the last season, you see the development of the character and you go, ‘Wait a minute, are they playing different roles?’ But then if you watch it throughout the years, you experience those things with the characters,” he told TV Insider in September 2024. “As competent and confident as Colter is, I don’t at all think for a second that he doesn’t have a ton to learn, especially about himself and his family and all that.”
Hartley continued: “Going forward, I think that will be how the show lives on a long runway, is that we keep developing this character and he becomes better at what he’s doing. He’s a restless man, and for an audience member, at least shows that I love to watch, you love to see that growth of a character and we have that.”
Hartley also warned that the character could die in the future.
“It’s important to keep upping the stakes. I like being Colter as a hero, finding people and all that. I also really like seeing him in a suspenseful thriller and a dangerous situation,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in April 2025. “I don’t want our audience to forget that this man is mortal, he’s not a superhero. He can die! The things he is doing are very, very dangerous.”
More recently, executive producer Elwood Reid weighed in on Colter’s fate, telling Us in October 2025, “Some of the danger is in here because he’s not a cop. He is this guy who is poking his nose in places. The network is always like, ‘He can get messed up, he can lose a fight, he can get conked on the head and he can have a gun pointed at him.’ Justin pitched an idea for the season 3 midseason finale where it doesn’t go well for Colter. That’s what makes him fun, is he is not a superhero.”
Reid noted that Tracker is always searching for ways to surprise viewers.
“When I watch a lot of these types of shows, the minute the character becomes infallible or perfect, then I’m uninterested,” Reid explained. “I like when characters have flaws and make mistakes and are mortal and can be wounded and can screw up.”
He continued: “I’m very conscious of not making Colter too perfect. We are scuffing him up, letting him screw up and letting him do the wrong thing. I think that’s what makes the character fun to write — at least for me.”
Tracker airs on CBS Sundays at 9 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Paramount+.
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