'Tracker' Officially Changes Up Colter Shaw for the First Time Since Season 2 | Review
Michael John Petty is a Senior Author for Collider who spends his days writing, in fellowship with his local church, and enjoying each new day with his wonderful wife and precious daughters. At Collider, he writes features, reviews, recaps, interviews, and breaking news on select occasion. In addition to writing about stories, Michael has told a few of his own, from supernatural thrillers to historical fiction. His Western short story, The Devil's Left Hand, received the Spur Award for "Best Western Short Fiction" in 2025 from the Western Writers of America, of which he is a member. Michael currently resides in North Idaho with his growing family.
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Tracker returns this week with a brand new Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) adventure as our lone wolf hero heads out to cowboy country to find out what happened to a local Texan. That's the basic plot of "Original Parts," anyway, but this week's episode also gives something a try that we haven't really seen on the show since the second season — giving Colter a real love interest. The CBS drama picks up some steam as several plotlines tease where the rest of Season 4 may go...
"Original Parts" Sends Colter to Texas on a New Case
The teaser begins in Hopper, Texas where a couple — Logan (JT Neal) and Britt Carson (Madison Lintz) — drive on a back country road in the dark in the middle of the night as they return from a high school reunion. Clearly, Britt is upset with Logan as she gives him the silent treatment before an argument brews. The pair argue over his texts to a woman named Sherry, who Logan works with, before Britt throws his phone out the window. When she stops the car, he gets out to go get it and she drives away. The next day, Colter Shaw arrives at a local parts shop and flirts with Jenna Nova (Gillian Bolt), daughter of the owner, Mario (Daniel Edward Mora). They take a turn through the vehicle graveyard to look for extra parts and trade plucky dialogue about how you can tell who someone is based on what they drive and all the odd things Jenna has found in the old trucks (severed hands being the most gruesome). Eventually, she asks him out to a local barbecue spot, and Colter seems instantly on board. Getting the parts he needs for fixing up his father's truck, Randy Davis (Chris Lee) calls with a job, sending Colter down south for $10K (which is on the lower end of Colter's previous finder's fees) now that Britt has gone missing. “I can be there in a few hours,” he says, leading us to wonder where in the world Jenna is supposed to be living that he would be able to drive to Hopper in such a short time...
Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard
Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.
🐕Wick
🏁Fast
🧨Mission
🎄Die Hard
01
How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.
02
It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.
03
Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.
04
It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.
05
There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.
06
How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.
07
Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.
08
When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.
Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.
John Wick
You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.
- The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
- You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
- Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
- People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.
Fast & Furious
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.
- This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
- You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
- You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
- The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.
Mission: Impossible
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.
- This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
- You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
- You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
- Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.
Die Hard
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.
- Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
- You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
- You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
- You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.
Unsurprisingly, it isn't long before Colter arrives in Hopper and meets with Logan. He gives the reward seeker the low-down, explaining that he and Britt sometimes argue but that she would never leave him. He maintains that he isn't having an affair (though clearly there's something going on between him and this "Sherry"). Although it's only been 12 hours, Colter is already on the case faster than a rattlesnake in daylight. The pair drive out to approximately where Britt left Logan on the road, and Colter believes that she may have stopped and turned around up ahead. He also finds evidence of broken tempered glass, maybe from a window. “I think someone else was here,” he says. Colter theorizes that someone smashed the window and forced himself inside the car. Calling Randy, they head off to the last place her phone gave a location ping. They find Britt’s phone, bloody and seemingly broken, as well as the fuse to the car's GPS. They meet with a local woman (Kristin Carey) whose pharmacy was broken into, only to find out that no security cameras caught the incident. Fortunately, there's a taco truck with a dash camera just nearby that Colter has Randy hack into. Watching the footage, they see the kidnapper (Niko Nicotera) holding Britt hostage. Randy narrows down the logo on the man's shirt to a local land development company in town — and their property is near the road where Britt went missing. Colter tells Logan to call the sheriff.
This Week's 'Tracker' Takes a Sharp Turn Into the World of Drugs and Money
Meanwhile, Britt is held at gunpoint by the armed, bleeding man who forces her to bury a duffle bag in the desert. She asks if he plans to kill her, and he tells her that he will if she does anything stupid. Otherwise, he plans to keep her safe from the person who is now chasing him, someone who will really kill her if he finds them. With no other choice, she follows as the bloody man leads her to their next destination. Meanwhile, Colter returns to the side of the road where Britt was taken and begins poking around. Following the blood trail, he wanders onto the nearby property to find where the blood originated. He eventually comes upon two trucks hidden behind some large rock structures. Several men are dead, and Colter takes a snapshot of a photo of the man who took Britt that was left in one of the trucks. He also finds drugs in the bed and realizes that this was some sort of No Country for Old Men-like deal that went south.
After calling Sheriff John Danaher (Jim Meskimen), Colter speaks to the lawman about the whole ordeal. The rewardist gives his thoughts on the whole shootout, believing that, since all the wounds were rifle wounds, someone was waiting nearby for them, killing everyone involved and injuring the man who took Britt. Unlike some of the other police officers who have been willing to clue our hero into the mystery, the sheriff thanks Colter for his help but largely dismisses him. Colter tries to get a list of the employees from this development company, but the local law department doesn’t seem to be forthcoming about making that happen. It’s okay, though, because tech wiz Randy identified the missing man (and Britt’s kidnapper) as Cyrus Trotzig, who has previously been charged with drug-related crimes and assault. Randy sends Colter the address of Cyrus' uncle's property outside of town.
At that hideout, Britt is stuck in an abandoned house with Cyrus. Her arm is tied to his as he sleeps — unfortunately, her escape attempt is thwarted, though Cyrus doesn't hurt her. Instead, he gets her to help him with his wound, asking her why she was alone so late at night. She explains, and Cyrus wonders why her husband would ever leave her alone out there at night. Meanwhile, Colter arrives and takes a look around, first searching the wrong structure like he did in last week's episode. Hopping over to the next one, Colter's movements set Cyrus off as the kidnapper shoots at our hero several times before being taken out by the local deputy, Brunmeier (T.J. Linnard), who found his way to the suspect's home on his own. Colter rescues Britt, and the cops arrive soon after.
'Tracker' Concludes This Week With New Romantic Teases
Although the sheriff thanks Colter for his work, the Carsons' vehicle is now evidence, so they can't leave Hopper without help. Brunmeier offers to give Logan and Britt a ride home, but the whole thing makes Colter suspicious — and he was already suspicious of the deputy's sudden arrival at the scene. It's not long before he puts the clues together for himself, realizing that it was Brunmeier who was at the drug deal shootout the night before. Randy sends Colter the location of Logan's phone, and he speeds off. Tracking down the deputy, Colter arrives to find a wounded Logan, who tells him that Brunmeier took Britt further down the dusty trail. After getting the money, Brunmeier shoots Britt, allowing Colter to track his whereabouts faster. The deputy and Colter exchange a few bullets, with Colter taking a quick hit and playing dead just long enough to get the upper hand and shoot down the corrupt officer. Colter cuffs Brunmeier and confirms that Britt, just like her husband, survived her wound.
Back in Denver, we catch up with Reenie (Fiona Rene) for the first time since her brief run-in with Randy after he got off the phone with Colter. Here, she encounters her former classmate and Maxine’s (Kathleen Robertson) occasional investigator, Adam Shevlin (Michael Malarkey). It seems these two have a shared romantic history, but Reenie has no interest in rekindling that flame. Adam wants to catch up, but the lawyer refuses anything more than professional — no doubt, he'll be back again down the line. Back in Texas, Colter apologizes to the sheriff for not filling him in on what was going on with Brunmeier, but Danaher understands — and plans to open up an internal investigation to ensure no one else is on the take. Afterward, Colter gets a call from Jenna, who found the truck parts he was looking for. They decide to get that date on the books sooner rather than later, and there seems to be a little extra pep in Colter's step afterward. Once upon a time, Colter refused to answer who the "one who got away" in his life was, and now it seems like he's trying to move forward and ensure Jenna doesn't get away from him too.
- Release Date
- February 11, 2024
- Network
- CBS
- Showrunner
- Elwood Reid
- Writers
- Ben H. Winters, Hilary Weisman Graham
-
Justin Hartley
Colter Shaw
-
Abby McEnany
Velma Bruin
Pros & Cons
- This week's case was solid with a few unexpected turns?and the action scene was fun too. More of that, please!
- Jenna and Colter seem to have great chemistry. We'll see how this goes!
- Filling out episodes with more of what Colter does in his off time is a smart play.
- I'm confused as to why Tracker is making such a big deal about Reenie getting a new office space. We all know she'll just keep working with Maxine, right?
- This week's episode could have fleshed out its side characters just a little more. Every time it got close, it cut away to something else.
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