How will Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) go about processing the fact that his mother (Wendy Crewson) seemed to have a major role in his father’s death? That’s what he’s facing when Tracker Season 3 premieres on Sunday, October 19.
Maybe his brother Russell (Jensen Ackles, back for the two-part premiere) can help. We’ll have to see how he reacts when Colter tells him about the conversation he had with the man Russell saw with their father the night he died, Otto (Alex Fernandez), who confirmed he pushed their dad off the cliff, and how their mother had asked for his help.
Below, showrunner Elwood Reid previews how Colter’s handling that finale bombshell, Jensen Ackles’ return, and much more.
How much time has passed when Season 3 begins?
Elwood Reid: A couple weeks. Colter’s kind of fallen off the grid a little bit, and it’s no surprise that who comes and finds him is his brother, played by Jensen Ackles. That conversation continued after the cliffhanger, and we’ll learn some of the contents of that conversation when he speaks to his brother in the opening of this season.
Are we going to see the rest of that conversation with Otto?
No, we won’t. We may go back to see parts, flashes of it later in the season, or we may go back to Otto. But what’s more important, I think, is just because it was a pretty heavy bomb we dropped, hearing what Colter thinks that bomb means and then hearing what his brother Russell thinks it could mean, and then you kind of put these two things together. It was just a way to make it more active for Colter with someone who — remember for a long time, he kind of blamed his brother with having something to do with it. So, I’m really proud of this scene and I’m really proud of, it’s just two guys in this little tiny set in the Airstream talking and it’s very tense. It’s an interesting scene for our show.
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How do each of the brothers handle that information?
I think what we’ve seen from Colter so far is he is beginning to sense that his mom — I mean, he knows that his mom has been lying to him, but the question is why and not just stone-cold murder. Where I think it ends up, as you’ll see, is that they become closer, but then another central mystery arises. Not just the bombshell we got, but the why of it all, and that’s something that we’re going to carry through the season a little bit. I think one of the things I wanted to do, because I have Justin, is I wanted to do it emotional because it goes without saying he’s a great actor, but he’s got that real emotional accessibility and to be able to get there — we have a fun bar fight in the beginning of the episode — to the scene where it’s just two guys talking about their emotions in the way that guys do, which is not very verbose half of the time, is a really fun scene. It was really fun to write, and we just kept taking away and taking away because I think both of the actors were really game to kind of play with each other. It was so much fun to shoot.
How is the brothers’ relationship? They started off the series not talking, but they’ve been slowly building a relationship. So is that going to continue?
Yeah. And there’s some little nuggets which I won’t give away about what’s going on in Russell’s life, but suffice it to say, when you get to that scene, just like when you got to the scene at the end of last season, the brothers realize — the audience learns how tense and heated and some of the external forces that were on that family previous to the father’s death. And Russell being older, he has a different, probably darker memory of it that was shielded from Colter, if you remember, because Russell disappeared and Colter stayed back with his mother. So, I think that’s where a lot of the anger and the blame came in, was from him blaming him for leaving him with this sort of mystery and this kind of aftershocks of what happened to his father. But then we hear Russell’s side of it in this scene. So, it is a really interesting scene. It doesn’t close any doors. It opens up a deeper mystery, but I still think — at least what I feel in the performances — you come away with it that Colter is still damaged and reckoning with what he learned. And we’re going to see a scene, he’s going to go back and we’re going to see him with his mom this season, but we’re waiting to get there. There’s some things we have to set up first.
I was going to ask: After that conversation with Otto, he obviously has to talk to his mom. So, he didn’t talk to her?
No, because in that conversation that we’re going to have in opening of the season, it kind of becomes, “There’s so much to talk about it and I need to know more before I go back there” because there’s one version where like, “Hey, you had dad killed.” I don’t think it’s that simple. I think it’s far more complicated emotionally. And part of what the conversation gets to there is that idea that — this is from Russell’s perspective. “Colter, you don’t know how bad dad was at the end. There’s things that I saw that you didn’t see.” And then his conversation with that man at the end of Season 2 confirms a lot of that. So it’ll just be interesting to see. Again, it’s something we take forth into the season. It’s this sort of storyline that we’re going to carry through a little bit, is Colter researching a little bit of some of the people that were in the sort of sphere or around his parents at the time when mom decided to do this very dark thing and you get a better explanation of exactly what happened that night in this scene I’m talking about.
You have Jensen back for the two-part premiere. Are there any other episodes you’re planning to have him back for or just those two?
I have an open door policy. He’s busy being a superhero [Vought Rising] and being a cop [Countdown] on Amazon. Jensen and I are friends. We worked together before [on Big Sky] and I love him, so, we’ll take him as much as we can get him. We’re hoping to see Dory, Melissa Roxburgh. Of course, we’ll see mom. And there’ll be some other people returning from last season, too, as well, people that are in his world. This is something Justin and I have spoken quite a bit about, building out — and I don’t mean the world of Tracker in a network procedural sense, but this world that he’s got. He meets these people along the way, and how does he use them? How do they interact and can they come back? I think some of that, just building out that world so it’s not always every week, it’s a fresh start. There’s going to be some familiar faces come back this season.
What else can you say about what’s going on with Russell? There’s always some mystery about what he’s doing with his life.
In Episode 2, you’ll get that. I’m hoping the fans take note and start howling because it would be — I mean, for some reason, Jensen just really fits in this world. I don’t know what it is. I mean, I have so many ideas and Jensen’s always one of my first call guys, but I do dangle a little sort of carrot out there in the end of Episode 2 and you get to see more of him with Reenie [Fiona Rene], which is a lot of fun, too.
Going back to Colter’s family mystery and the new element introduced, it’s going to be still stretching across the season?
Yeah.
Will we be getting answers at certain points?
I think if we do it right, and again you’ll see the setup a little bit. There was a number that he found in his father’s stuff that he asked Randy [Chris Lee] to look into that’s going to bear a little bit of fruit and then it’s going to slowly get him closer to what his father was actually up to. But I think one of the things instead of just continually going back into the past, which is over and done, is that these things — and I don’t want to use the sins of the father as a terminology — but these things are ongoing perhaps.
Colter learns what happened to his father that night. The bigger question is, what was my father involved in? What caused this normal man to take his family out into the woods, begin this sort of very rigid training of these, what did he know? What did he think was happening? We’ve had a couple of hints. I think that’ll be a fun direction to go to with him. Because we also have this large block of missing time from Colter when he became a tracker. So it’s just getting into that and then also trying to make those stakes when it comes to the Shaw family current, not in the past. That’s the thing we’re starting to plant our flag in slowly throughout the season.
The season kicks off with a two-part premiere. Are there any other multi-episode arcs coming up?
There’ll be one for our fall finale, and then hopefully there’ll be one ramping deep into the back half having to do with some interesting dark secret that he uncovers by poking into his family’s past.
Are you looking at that as contained in this season or something that would then stretch on?
I don’t know. Maybe you talk to showrunners who have encyclopedias. I’m a guy who flies by the seat of his pants, so I get bored quickly. I have general ideas about where that’s going to go and some sort of emotional guideposts, but I’m open to anything happening as far as that goes.
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Is there anything else you can preview about the new season?
No, it’s just getting to see Colter in a different light. You’re going to see him in a really dark place and getting to see his interactions with his brother and how that comes about. I’m really proud of our two-parter. Production wise, those are always hard to pull off. But also just from a storytelling standpoint, a lot of times I see two parters and I go, “God, this could be one episode. They’re just stretching it out.” Because I’m really impatient. I think that when Tracker‘s working on all cylinders is when we have a case that tells you something about Colter, a little bit about his past, he has that emotional connection. And then it also services this broader story arc that we’ve been trying to get to. So, we’ve been very, very careful in trying to have some of these cases, particularly the cases that open the season — If you remember last year, it was the second episode, the UFO episode. That was very intentional that that case would tangle back with the Shaw family stuff. So just trying to always keep that in mind. And this is something Justin and I talk a lot about, not viewing it as case of the week. I think the show’s been able to slide a little bit past that classification.
And with Colter in a dark place, is there anyone he’s going to be leaning on? His brother is in and out of his life, Reenie is going through her own things. So is he leaning in on anyone or is he really internalizing it?
No, I don’t think Colter’s really a leaner. I mean, he’s kind of a guy who’s like, “Screw it, I’m going to go off, sit in a bar by myself and get my s**t together.” I think that’s what makes his character interesting, is he’s this really strong archetypal American character. He’s the guy you want to come when you are having a problem. But at the same time, and again, this is what I think makes Justin the perfect vehicle for this, you get to see that he does have his own scars, his own demons. He does have these things that he’s working through. Now, who he shares that with and how he shares that, he’s not a guy who sits down in a therapy couch and talks about his feelings, but when he does bring it up, we saw it with the Jennifer Morrison character, Lizzy. We’re definitely going to see it with Russell. We have seen sparks of it with Reenie. It’s very meaningful and I think that’s what’s fun with playing with his character. It’s not giving too much of that away. It’s just not his character.
What are the chances of getting a full Shaw family reunion dinner episode?
That’s the dream. Once I get one nailed down, it’s always that Ackles guy. He’s the one that’s causing the problem. So I don’t know. I’ve got to check with his superhero show to see how he’s doing there.
Tracker, Season 3 Premiere, Sunday, October 19, 8/7c, CBS
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