'Tracker' Finally Delivers on What Colter Shaw Has Been Missing for 2 Seasons | Review

Image via CBS Published Oct 25, 2026, 10:00 PM EDT 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. Sign in to your Collider account Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Tracker Season 4, Episode 4.After teasing a new love interest for Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) last week, Tracker returns with another adventure that ends in a possible love connection. Don't worry, it seems like Jenna Nova (Gillian Bolt) is here to stay for now, but that doesn't mean that our hero doesn't have other important things to do. Heading to Utah, Colter is hired to track down a missing woman in a mystery that's far more complicated than heartbreak might imply. As Season 4 continues strong, this week's episode, "Purification," reminds us that Colter is truly the best at what he does. "Purification" Sends Colter to Utah on a New Case Late one night in Danville, Utah (which sounds like the beginnings of a country song), Nicole Dunning (Iman Benson) sits crying in a park. This may seem like normal heartbreak at first, but since this is an episode of Tracker, we know there's more to it than that. When Nicole hears a strange noise coming from the bushes, someone in a hoodie (Luca Diaz) rushes up to her telling her not to scream, pulling her away. The next day, our resident tech wizard Randy Davis (Chris Lee) gives Colter a call with an $8K reward from the father, Roy Dunning (Troy Winbush), who is quite worried about her daughter, despite her only being missing a day. It would've maybe been fine had Nicole not missed his birthday dinner, and that was unlike her. When Colter arrives in town, Roy walks him through Nicole's apartment. Colter reassures the worried father that he's here to help, and Roy reveals that Nicole had been upset a few days back, but he wasn’t able to find out why. Colter begins putting the pieces together when he finds a box of cupcakes in the trash, which Randy tracks back to a Stephen Jones (Kanoa Goo). Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would BeYour Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn't work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back. 🎖️Rambo 🍸James Bond 🏺Indiana Jones 🔧John McClane 🎭Ethan Hunt FIND YOUR PARTNER → 01 You're dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you. ASomeone who already has three contingency plans running and is calmly working through all of them. BSomeone who reads the terrain instinctively and knows exactly how to use it against the enemy. CSomeone who keeps their nerve and their sense of humour when everything is falling apart. DSomeone who knows the history of wherever we are and what we're walking into. ESomeone with the right contact, the right cover identity, and the right exit already arranged. NEXT QUESTION → 02 You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission. AOn foot through terrain no one else would attempt — I move where vehicles can't follow. BOn a motorcycle, a cargo plane, or anything else that gets me there before I think too hard about it. CIn something that belongs to someone else — borrowed, stolen, or improvised under fire. DFirst class, with a cover identity and a gadget that does something I won't explain until it's needed. EBy whatever means are available — I've driven, flown, and once arrived by camel. The destination matters, not the method. NEXT QUESTION → 03 You're pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of. ADisappears into the environment, flanks them silently, and ends it before I've reloaded. BCracks a one-liner, grabs a fire extinguisher or a chair, and improvises something that somehow works. CProduces a gadget specifically designed for this exact scenario and uses it with infuriating precision. DPulls out a whip, a pistol, and an archaeological insight that somehow gets us out alive. ENeutralises the threat with maximum efficiency and minimum words — they were already three moves ahead. NEXT QUESTION → 04 The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are. AA bar with terrible lighting, cold beer, and absolutely no questions about feelings. BThe finest restaurant in the city, a bottle of something expensive, and a conversation that is equal parts brilliant and exhausting. CA local dig site, a museum after hours, or a long story about why that particular artefact matters to human civilisation. DPizza. Bad TV. Falling asleep halfway through a movie neither of you were watching anyway. EA debrief that turns into three hours of contingency planning that somehow becomes the most fun you've had all week. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability. APrecise and minimal — tell me what I need to know and nothing else. Every word has a cost. BDeadpan and dry — keeping it light keeps me sharp, even when everything is on fire. CEnthusiastic and slightly chaotic — but always with useful information buried somewhere in the noise. DCalm and controlled through an earpiece, with a plan that covers every variable I haven't thought of yet. EBarely at all — silence is a language and they speak it fluently. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership. AInfiltrate their inner circle, learn everything, and dismantle them from inside out before they know we're there. BStudy the historical pattern — every villain of this type has a weakness written somewhere in the past. CGet them talking. The more they monologue, the more time I have to figure out how to beat them. DGo through them. Directly. With as much force as the terrain allows. EFind the one thing they haven't accounted for — there's always one thing — and make sure we're holding it. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Things go badly wrong and you're captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters. ACome in alone, quietly, and get me out before anyone knows they were there. BHave already been working on the extraction since the moment I disappeared — the plan is already running. CCome in loud, come in fast, and worry about the collateral damage later — I'd do the same for them. DUse every resource, every contact, and bend every rule until I'm out — they don't leave people behind. ECharm their way in somehow, bluff through the hard part, and still manage to look good doing it. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn't replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn't know you had. ATechnology that shouldn't exist yet and the training to use it under any conditions. BSurvival instinct so refined it borders on supernatural — and the scars to prove it's been tested. CKnowledge of history, language, and culture that makes them invaluable in places where force is useless. DThe ability to walk into any room in the world and immediately become the most trusted person in it. EStubbornness that refuses to accept a situation is hopeless — and the improvisational skill to back it up. NEXT QUESTION → 09 Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together. AA partner who never fully switches off — always watching exits, always calculating threats, even at dinner. BA partner who gets the job done brilliantly but has the emotional availability of a locked filing cabinet. CA partner who makes everything ten times more complicated than it needs to be — but who always comes through. DA partner who gets personally attached to every relic, ruin, and artefact we encounter, which slows everything down. EA partner who was not built for this and knows it — but shows up anyway, every time, without being asked. NEXT QUESTION → 10 It's the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one. AOne line. Absolutely dry. Delivered like the world isn't ending. Then we move. BNothing said at all — just a look that means we both already know what has to happen. CA plan I don't fully understand that somehow accounts for everything, delivered in thirty seconds flat. DA piece of historical context that reframes the entire situation and tells us exactly what to do next. ESomeone who steps forward instead of back — because that's who they've always been. REVEAL MY PARTNER → Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse. RamboYour partner doesn't talk much, doesn't need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you've finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You'll never need to ask if he has your back. You'll just know. James BondYour partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it'll take you a moment to remember what's actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You'll never be bored. You'll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing. Indiana JonesYour partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar's eye and a brawler's instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn't matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you'll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them. John McClaneYour partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren't so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay. Ethan HuntYour partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you've finished reading the briefing, and the plan he's settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn't exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ Of course, we can't forget about the riveting office space hunt by Reenie (Fiona Rene) and Mel (Cassady McClincy Zhang). Every chance Tracker gets, it seems like we're bouncing around this idea, which is a shame because at this point, some of Reenie's legal cases would even be more exciting — or, you know, any new developments surrounding Mel's mother's death. Fortunately, "Purification" doesn't make us sit through it for long, because Colter soon arrives at Stephen's home to find his young son, Henry (Lincoln Bodin), at the door. When Stephen shows up, he pretends not to know who Nicole is before Colter threatens to reveal the truth about his affair to his wife. The cheater quickly reveals that he and Nichole met at the park the night before, talked, and ended things for good. Although he has no idea where she might be, Colter demands he show him the location of the meeting. When Stephen pushes back, wondering what he'll tell his family, Colter replies with the sickest of burns: "Just go lie to your wife or something, you're good at that. Figure it out." At the park, Stephen shows Colter around. They find a bracelet of Nicole's in the grass and discover that her car is missing. Stephen tells him that the east side of the park has had some assaults, and Colter drives off, leaving the cheating husband in the dust. Pulling up at a gas station, Colter finds a towing company hauling a wrecked car with stripped plates. He takes a look and discovers it’s been broken into — and that there's a hoodie with a strange barcode on the back left inside. When Colter speaks with the gas station manager, Dale (Matthew Downs), he reveals that his employee got assaulted the night before over the car. So, Colter heads to the hospital to speak with this employee, Fernando (Izzy Diaz), who tells him that Nicole came in the night before with a kid with burn marks on his hands. She told Fernando that the boy was in trouble and all of a sudden a truck with a camper plowed in. The guy from the camper knocked Fernando out, but not before he saw one crucial clue: a sticker with a two-headed tiger. 'Tracker' Puts Colter In the Middle of the Chaos Image via CBS Colter calls Randy, and they try to put two and two together. The logo is for a group called Tiger Club International, which has a location nearby. Colter also sends Randy the picture of a hoodie, and Mel clocks it as being from a hospital, since she took a friend to the ER the month before and they gave her one there. That certainly gives Colter an edge in figuring out where to go from here. But first, the Tiger Club. When Colter first arrives, the secretary (Alejandra Flores) refuses to help him, but again, this is Tracker, and Colter effortlessly flashes a smile and offers that old rewardist charm that gets him what he needs. The older woman believes she knows exactly who Colter means when he talks about the man in the green-and-white camper van who kidnapped a young woman, adding that they revoked his membership due to creepy behavior. “I think it was Montgomery,” she says, looking through old records to find Tate Montgomery. Colter tracks down the old address on file at the Tiger Club and, unsurprisingly, finds the camper van. Breaking in, Colter investigates the home to find breakfast left on the kitchen table. Looking around, he heads downstairs to find a mattress on the floor and chains in the wall. Looking even deeper, he finds a dead, mummified body in another room — it appears that Tate Montgomery has been dead for a long time. Colter finds evidence of a fire and puts two and two together about the teenager with Nicole: clearly he was on the run. Colter discovers that an Elias Williams (Brian Stepanek, who Disney Channel fans may remember as "Arwin" from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody) was cashing in Montgomery’s Social Security checks. According to Randy, Elias was Montgomery's stepson and a former preacher who hasn't worked in the pulpit for more than a few years. He also finds a hidden camera in the closet that has the captive teenager — who turns out to be Elias' own son Jason — on video being tortured by his father. This Week's 'Tracker' Concludes By Teasing Colter's New Date Image via CBS It isn't long before Randy is able to track Elias' phone to a storage unit nearby, and Colter is once more on the case. Stumbling on Elias, Colter nearly has him when a van pulls around and picks up the villain. Elias' wife, Cheryl (Sarah Chaney), drives them off, screaming at her husband for taking Nicole in the first place. Jason is their responsibility, in her view, but not this young woman they've now kidnapped. Wondering what to do with Nicole, Elias says they should keep her, seeing her as a gift — if you weren't already clued in, the Williams' are the problematic religious types who misquote scripture to justify whatever it is they feel like doing with their only child. It's messed up, but pretty par for the course with these sorts of stories. In fact, Reenie even discovers that Jason was forced to drink bleach for "purification" purposes (hence the episode title), which explains the barcode on his hoodie. Although Colter is fast on the trail, Nicole breaks free of her restraints and chokes Cheryl out, forcing the van off the road and into a gnarly crash. When Colter arrives, he finds that Jason and Nicole are already gone, having escaped into the nearby woods, and Elias is hot on their trail — Cheryl, on the other hand, has been knocked out cold. As Elias chases Nicole and Jason into the woods, he screams about the “price of disobedience,” and it makes you feel like you're watching something inspired by Stephen King. But things don't get quite so spooky. When Elias hears Nicole and Jason, he eventually comes upon his son. Jason tries to trick his father, giving Nicole the chance to get a good shot in before Elias overpowers her, but his father once more gets the upper hand — at least, until Colter shows up. With basically no effort at all (unlike that firefight last week), Colter takes down Elias and makes sure that Jason is safe. At the hospital, Roy reunites with his daughter as Jason recovers. After Colter gets his reward, he receives a call from Reenie, who reveals that the boy's parents have been arrested. Instead, Jason will be sent to an aunt in Texas for a fresh start, which sounds like the absolute best thing for him. Afterward, we finally get to the end of the new office hunt when Reenie meets with Randy and Mel outside a local building with “character, history, and layers.” Randy doesn't love the sound of that, but at least he doesn't (and we don't) have to hear any more about how the latest place didn't work out. Lastly, "Purification" ends on a high note for Colter as Jenna drives out to deliver the trunk bench seat he ordered for his father's old pickup. It's a thing of beauty, but Colter can hardly keep his eyes off Jenna. She wonders if he gets lonely out here all by himself, but after he poorly communicates that he's not always alone (he meant it because of his work), he asks her to dinner at a diner further up the road. They may not have made their previous date plans, but she seems happy to settle for this. Release Date February 11, 2024 Network CBS Showrunner Elwood Reid Cast Justin Hartley Colter Shaw Pros & Cons Loved having the whole team involved on a case for the first time. Colter holding nothing back from that sleazy, cheating husband was great. Allowing Colter to be vulnerable (and awkward) with someone like Jenna is a refreshing change of pace. Feels like the standard "crazy religious person" story. Nothing new here. What's with all the "new office" talk? Glad the hunt is over, but it lasted way too long.