‘Tracker’ Casts Jensen Ackles as Colter’s Brother Russell — Get Details (PHOTO)

We are going to meet Russell Shaw this season, and the casting couldn’t be better.

Jensen Ackles has been cast as the estranged brother of Justin Hartley‘s Colter Shaw on Tracker. (Fun fact: Both starred on Smallville, but at different times.) Hartley shared the news himself with a fun video on Instagram featuring Ackles, and TV Insider has learned he will appear in the May 12 episode.

In “Off the Books,” Colter is forced to team up with his estranged brother, Russell, who enlists his help to track down a former army buddy who’s gone missing after several weeks of paranoid behavior. The investigation takes the brothers into the world of Special Forces missions, shady off-the-books programs and conspiracy theories, all while they contend with their family’s past. Check out a photo from the episode above.

Hartley starts the video by thanking everyone for watching and the response to the show. “We’ve been talking about Russell Shaw, my brother, all season this family drama that’s been going on between Colter and Russell, and we finally came up with what I think is the perfect casting choice,” he says. “This person knocks it out of the park every time.” You can then hear someone in the background playing a video game, and that person is Ackles. Watch the full video below.

 

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The series premiere of Tracker introduced the mystery of what happened to Colter’s father (Lee Tergesen) when he was younger; flashbacks made it look like Russell (18 at the time), after following him out of their cabin in the woods, may have pushed him to his death. (His father, Colter shared in the premiere, “taught us how to track, how to hunt. Taught us to free-climb at this place he called Devil’s Notch.”)

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In the present day of the premiere, Colter received a series of text messages he ignored: “Come on, Colter. Call me back. We gotta talk.” “Don’t ignore me, Colter. There is something you need to know…” “I’m not going away. You need to hear what I have to say.” The episode ended with Colter returning to that cabin, where his mother joined him at the grave marker for his father. He told her about Russell’s calls and asked if there was something she knew about his brother or father that he should know. She told him to block the number and ignore him. She’d asked very little of him over the years, but what she wanted was for him to leave it be, for everyone’s sake.

News of Ackles’ casting as Colter’s brother comes soon after Hartley revealed that Melissa Roxburgh will be playing his sister, Dory, as an adult. She’ll appear in the May 5 episode, “Beyond the Campus Walls.” In that episode, when a grad student goes missing after a house party, his friends and family believe he buckled under the pressure of his research grant. But, after consulting with his sister Dr. Dory Shaw, a professor at the school, Colter uncovers a trail of explicit photos and messages that lead him to uncover a dangerous – and deadly – conspiracy on campus.

What do you think of the casting of Jensen Ackles as Colter’s brother? Let us know in the comments section, below.

Tracker, Sundays, 9/8c, CBS