Is [Spoiler] Dead on ‘Tracker’? Plus, Colter’s ‘Extreme’ Injury, Explained

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 “Good Trouble.”]

Uh-oh, is Tracker about to kill off a recurring character?! The fall finale ends with not only one life hanging in the balance, but Colter (Justin Hartley) in some serious danger as well.

Keaton (Brent Sexton) calls on Colter to help him find his missing partner, and in doing so, they dive deep into a conspiracy in the town involving bodies buried on a farm, crime bosses, and much more. It’s an encounter with an assassin that leaves Keaton bleeding badly after being shot and Colter speeding to get him to the hospital while pleading with him to hang on … only for someone to take a shot at them. The car then swerves off the road, and the fall finale ends with it flipping — and Colter and Keaton’s fates are uncertain.

So, of course, TV Insider had to turn to showrunner Elwood Reid for some answers as well as teases about what to expect when Tracker Season 3 returns on March 1, 2026.

What can you say about Keaton’s fate? It wasn’t looking good for him before that car accident.

Elwood Reid: We went in there, we were going to kill him, but you’ll see what ends up happening. But it was an interesting thing because we did want a cliffhanger, but we knew it would be kind of BS to just have a cliffhanger with Colter in danger. But Colter is also extremely injured. He’s also been shot. You’ll see that when we pick up in Episode 10. So it’s one of those things where we played with all the different ideas, and Colter does something heroic in the top of 10 to get themselves out of that situation. But yeah, it was fun playing because it’s funny, you talk about Keaton. We thought that was a character that the audience liked because he’d went to this really dark, weird place with Colter before, and so it was just a character we’ve always talked about. We’ve toyed with the idea of bringing him into Reenie’s [Fiona Rene] office to work as an investigator. That’s why we had that phone call in the beginning. So he’s just this guy that’s never left our conversation in the writers’ room.

Darko Sikman/CBS

Yeah, because I was going to say, obviously, you’re not killing off Colter because that’s the show, but like you said, he is injured. But also, whatever Keaton’s fate, this is someone he’s very fond of. So that has to be affecting him, too, how he’s going to be reacting to things.

Exactly. And whenever Colter has an emotional connection with somebody — I mean, I think the scene in the end when he’s telling him to hold on and he’s trying to save him and then all of a sudden… that was just the perfect example of why Justin is — That’s just a normal driving scene where he’d be yelling and trying to get, but he made it this emotional thing and it’s really hard to act to a mirror like that. I was so impressed with the way Justin because it wasn’t on the page, he brought that emotion to that scene.

Can you confirm that it was the assassin who was shooting at them, or could it have been someone else? Because who knows how many players are involved?

I cannot. It gets very twisty in Episode 10.

Love Jes Macallan guest starring for the Mistresses reunion with Justin.

[Laughs] That was his idea, too.

He’s said he likes to bring friends on. And then that’s Sasha Roiz as the commissioner, right?

Yeah.

Both will be back in the midseason premiere?

Yep. Fun twists with that storyline, too. It’s always Colter looking for somebody missing and we’re always over his shoulder, but we wanted to tell a little bit bigger story, and so the structure allowed us to open up that side and see that side of the story, which we’ve been doing more and more of this year, and I think it’s been paying off.

Because of those castings, I have to wonder if they can be trusted. But at this point, do either Colter or Keaton suspect that one of them could be involved? Has that crossed their minds yet?

No. I don’t want to ruin the surprises in 10. There’s some fun scenes.

Darko Sikman/CBS

Because Colter has been dealing with so much this season — we saw where he started at the beginning, everything about his father, and with his mom. Why did you want to have him facing a potential loss for him like Keaton?

It’s this thing to kind of shake the show up a little bit because it’s always a case of the week, and there’s been this weird thing that’s been happening where there’s characters that we return to, and they feel like they’re part of the Tracker family. Keaton always felt that way because if you remember Keaton’s episode, he took Colter down a really dark path in that thing. And so those guys shared something very intimate and very intense. So we knew, at least I suspected when Justin got with him, there’d just be this immediate warmth and chemistry, and then you’d really care about what happened at the end. And again, that scene at the end in the car when Justin and Brent are just trying to escape that house, that emotion was just really right there. It was a first-take emotion.

Because Justin’s an executive producer, he’s not just an actor in the show, we talk a lot about it. He’ll always call me and tell me and go, “Man, I really like this actor, [had a] connection that really worked.” He’s a good barometer of when he thinks a guest actor is really going to work and live in our show. And he had that feeling from the minute Brent showed up on set for the first episode he was in, and I listened to that as a writer. I’m like, “Oh, OK. He knows something.” He’s got that chemistry with that person because our show is so episodic, and it is a new case of the week, it does help to kind of come back and [bring back] people because I think there’s going to be people that we’ve already seen this season we’re going to see again this year because they worked.

I like the true crime people. They were fun.

Oh, yeah. Again, it’s funny, when we wrote them, we were like, “Oh, it’s kind of funny. Comic relief. Could we see them again?” And that’s why we put that little button in the scene where they offer their services. It’s both the blessing and a challenge of the show because he’s always out there by himself; it does help when we can kind of sometimes bring in other characters that we’ve seen before.

When you were looking at this first part of the season, because there’s a conspiracy thing with Colter’s family’s past, did you also want to have cases of the week that kind of leaned into conspiracy? You had the two-parter premiere, you had the episode with MC (Italia Ricci)…

[It’s interesting] that you bring those two things up. The first one, there was a lot of discussion in the room, should the Process thing be connected to something with his family? We talked about that for a long time, just as a fun point of thing. And then the MC character, she’s someone that we’ve designed or hope to be able to bring back. She’s a pretty formidable person, and she’s one of those kind of people, I think, that if Colter ever really needed some heavy lifting, some dirty lawyering done, that’d be the person to call. There’s that scene at the end of the episode, he knows that she’s kind of a bad person, but he also realizes she’s f**king good. I thought that was just a fun scene the way those two played that. It was a game recognizes game.

Yeah, that was one of my questions. That dance between the two was so engaging.

And I was worried they were going to lean into it, but the way they just underplayed it, it was so much fun. Again, smart actors, Justin, he always knows where to go with it.

Because of where you left things with the fall finale and what you’ve been teasing about what we’ll see in the midseason premiere, are we going to see a bit of a different Colter going forward as he’s grappling with the aftermath of this?

A little bit. I mean, we’re going to be platforming towards — there’s some stuff that’s heating up in that storyline that he’s been exploring about his father’s past a little bit. So I think as we get into there, we’re going to sort of see it. We do see different sides of him. And again, it’s always playing to, I think, Justin’s strengths, which is he’s the strong, silent type, but he’s also really capable of this heart-on-his-sleeve emotion when he wants to show it to you. And I think that’s what we’re going for there and it’ll play out. But I mean, with Keaton, he’s a guy we also have talked a lot about, so there’s some meaning there about what happens in 10.

Related

Ask Matt: 'Tracker's Missing Characters, 'Talamasca' & More

At the beginning of the season, we had talked about what’s going on with Reenie and how she reacts to what happened to her, and we’re getting a little bit sprinkled in the show. There are signs we should be worried about her. We’re seeing Randy (Chris Lee) and Mel (Cassady McClincy Zhang) picking up on things. Are you going to continue to slow-play that?

You’re going to see some fun stuff. There’s some other things that are going to be happening in the office with Mel and with Reenie that you’re going to think are going to be one thing, they’re going to be something else … coming up in Episode 11. This case starts, and we bring another character into the office, which will be fun.

How aware is Reenie at this point of how she’s doing?

I think she’s like all of us. I mean, I don’t know. I think we watch too much TV and everyone has their pulse on their mental state every moment. I don’t think anybody does. I think you wake up and you go, “Man, I feel like s**t, my life is s**t.” This character that we’re going to bring into the office is going to be a person that’s not there for that, but then ends up being this weird sounding board, and I don’t want to use the word therapist, this person that Reenie can have a relationship with that we can get underneath the hood on her because she does hide it. And I think it’s just fun. And giving Fiona something to play long-term through the season is really going to pay off, I think.

But until that happens, at this point, she’s just kind of pushing it to the back of her mind?

I think she’s like we all do. She’s drinking, probably doing things she shouldn’t be doing, and she’s kidding herself that she’s got it together and she doesn’t.

Speaking of Reenie’s office, I am very intrigued by Mel. She’s very interested in what Colter does. She brought up her mom’s unsolved murder. It feels like, yes, she may want to work for Reenie, but she also may have an ulterior motive for being there that involves Colter. Could it be both? Is it one more than the other?

It’s so interesting because I think so many people are so trained to think everyone’s suspicious when they come in and they have a motive. The story she did tell about her mother is legitimate. That’s something I think we’re going to hope to get to or touch on in some way, whether it’s vis-à-vis her emotional character, part of her character, or a real storyline. This character that’s coming into the office is also going to involve Mel a little bit. I think the actress really brings a fun, interesting, I hate to use the word quirky, but just a young sort of vibe to the office that we’re really having a lot of fun writing to. And it is so interesting. We first brought her in, everyone on the Twitter sphere, and the audience was like, “She’s up to something. She’s dirty.” I’m like, no. We had thought about that, but — And it doesn’t mean that she can’t have secrets, but I think she genuinely is on our team, and we’re going to learn more about her going forward. She’s so much fun to write for.

Yeah, so even if she has something going on, she still wants to work for Reenie, which I like.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You hit on the storyline that’s coming up, so you’ll see.

Tracker, Midseason Return, Sunday, March 1, 2026, 9/8c, CBS