Tracker Season 4 Is Changing Colter's Cases In 1 Major Way

Published Oct 4, 2026, 11:57 AM EDT

Abdullah Al-Ghamdi joined Screen Rant in August 2019 and is now one of the leading contributors of the TV News team. Having written over 4000 news stories in that time , with his work cited in Buzzfeed and TV Insider, he's always bemoaning that there's too many shows and not enough time. You can contact him at: aalghamdi@hey.com.

EXCLUSIVE: The cases in Tracker season 4 are changing.

With its October premiere on CBS, the Justin Hartley-led action drama is continuing its reign as one of the most popular shows on network television. Bolstered by that success, perhaps, the upcoming episodes are poised to expand its focus on Tracker's supporting characters. Chris Lee, who plays Randy, and Cassady McClincy Zhang, who plays Mel Day, have both been upgraded to series regulars.

Reenie (Fiona Rene) is also getting a potential new love interest. He'll be played by The Vampire Diaries alum Michael Malarkey. But, on the whole, the spotlight won't drift too far from Hartley's Colter Shaw.

In an interview with ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns to discuss Tracker season 4, showrunner and executive producer Elwood Reid offered a preview of how Justin Hartley's Colter Shaw will be presented in the upcoming episodes. In particular, Reid talks about what makes the CBS drama different than other procedurals and how that will inform some of the storytelling approach moving forward.

In his quote, which is included below, the showrunner talks about what it would mean for the show if Colter did not succeed in all of his cases. He also discusses learning more about Colter himself, beyond just the Shaw family mystery that has served as the central ongoing arc:

Elwood Reid: As I've said multiple times, one of the benefits of the show, I think, is there's a real emotional component to the storytelling. Nothing wrong with it, I've done a million of them, but most police shows, the person's already dead, and you're just trying to get answers for the loved ones. Here, the loved ones are the people that are hiring you. They're the people that they're looking for. There's a keen emotional stakes and clock on that case, and Colter is able, most of the time, to bring a pretty happy result to it. So, one of the things we're toying with this year is, "What does it look like if he doesn't always succeed, or what happens if some of these jobs get into some morally darker gray areas?" And, even more importantly, "Is there is there a much longer storyline we can begin to tease about a bigger bad guy that might be out there?"

So, those are the things that we're toying with this year. I feel like when you get to a fourth season, it's not a chance to hit a complete reset, but it allows you to kind of like take and scramble the furniture a little bit , and do something different with it, because you're right. We did do the family stuff, and I felt like we did get to the end of that, and we mined all there was to get out of that. But that doesn't mean to say that — we still know very little about Colter's life after that messed-up family, and when he became a tracker, and also what he does in between these cases. So, I think there's a lot of real estate that we can play with as far as exploring his character and what makes him tick, and giving him different kinds of cases that really shake him up and rattle him a little bit.

The breakout adaptation, which is based on The Never Game by Jeffrey Deaver, is positioned to take a step away from all the personal tumult. When viewers last saw Colter in the Tracker season 3 finale, he was finally in a good place about his father's mysterious death. He believes that Ashton Shaw, ultimately, is a good man. That's complicated by the fact that Colter's older brother, Russell (Jensen Ackles), receives a file that promises more secrets about who their father was actually doing.

Colter doesn't know about the file yet. He might by the time Russell makes a confirmed guest appearance in Tracker season 4, episode 5. Until then, audiences may have some room to learn about who Colter's personality removed from his traumatic background and dangerous job. It is always a delicate balance for a procedural to shift away from the broad, case-of-the-week elements that brought in the audience to begin with.

Some procedurals never really manage it. The main characters remain mostly blank slates, existing to move the latest plot forward, even after several seasons. But the best shows, the ones that last, strike a balance. And as Hartley showed with Tracker director and executive producer Ken Olin during their time on the family saga This Is Us, Hartley can ably deliver all kinds of performances. Up until now, Colter Shaw has only shown a few.

Tracker season 4 premieres Sunday, October 4 at 9:30 PM ET on CBS and streams on Paramount+.