Tracker Showrunner Elwood Reid on Colter’s Struggles, Jensen Ackles' Return & Expanding the Series’ World

The return of Tracker brings with it not only a fascinating and twisty case but also the reunion of two brothers bound by grief and the lingering mysteries of their family’s past.

After the surprising events of Tracker Season 2 Episode 20, which found Colter coming face-to-face with the man who pushed his father off a cliff when he was just a kid, Colter took some time away to process a series of new truths.

And when we meet him to begin Tracker Season 3, it’s apparent that his past and his family’s secrets are weighing heavily on his mind, even when he finds himself back to work and back in tracker mode.

After a strong Tracker Season 2, the series returns sharper than ever, with the Shaw brothers opening the hour fighting alongside one another and having an honest conversation that’s been decades in the making.

It was a standout hour for Tracker, leaving us on a cliffhanger and promising more intrigue and chaos as the two-part premiere wraps up next week.

Showrunner and Executive Producer Elwood Reid chatted with us to discuss the beginning of Tracker Season 3, offering thoughtful insight into where the series will begin this season and where it’s headed next.

From Colter and Russell’s evolving relationship to the expansion of the Tracker world and a deeper exploration into the Shaw family secrets, this talk dives into what makes this season poised to be the most compelling one yet.

When we first get back into this season, we see that Colter has essentially taken himself off the grid for a few weeks, which felt very much like a Colter thing to do. What do you think those weeks looked like for him mentally and emotionally?

Well, put it this way. What happened at the season finale was heavy enough for him to completely pull the plug and disengage from the people around him. Because remember, we didn’t see the end of that conversation, so that conversation continued on.

Some of the things that he learned about his mother, his father, and some other things about his family are things that he’s dealing with.

You see him still in the first two episodes, particularly the first episode of this season, still processing that. Remember, this is a guy who lives by himself, drives around the country in an Airstream.

I think his way of shutting off was to go fishing, to go into the off-the-grid places, and just not to engage with the world.

What I think is fun when you see him in the season is that only Russell can come there, and Russell just doesn’t say, “Hey, come on, let’s go get back to work.”

They have to have this pretty heavy conversation about shit that went down in their family.

And that’s one of the elements I like about this show, is that you have a guy in a network show that we can have almost ten minutes of the opening of this first season dealing with this trauma that happened in their past before we even get to the case.

That’s what makes Colter such an interesting character. He is human, he does have some demons, if you want to say it. He is working through some stuff. Then, of course, Russell gets him out on a case, but I think a lot of shows would be like, “Oh, he went fishing for two weeks.”

Once Russell goes and drags him out of that bar, Colter is still not letting the past go, and he brings it up a couple of times throughout the first two episodes. I think that’s just what makes him an interesting, nuanced character.

I totally agree. And having Russell be that person who meets him at the beginning of the episode, was that always the plan? Was Russell always going to be the first person that he confided in about everything that he learned?

Yeah, but good luck trying to get Jensen Ackles. It’s not easy. I’m not kidding you. We wanted to do it, and I’m friends with Justin, so we were texting. The schedule was crazy, and literally up until the last minute, I’m just like, “Fuck it!”

Let’s try to do this, which is a big riff, which I never want to do. We wrote it before we even had him closed. He’s in high-end demand. He had two shows at the time, and he had this little, tiny window of about eight days.

I was like, “Fuck it, we’re going to do him for two episodes over those eight days. We’re just going to grab him.”

And he’s a sport and a champ. He was exhausted, but he came up there and did those eight days with us. It was so much fun. But it’s always risky when you write for something you don’t think you have, because we were told he was not available.

Then I started texting Jensen and said, “Are you really unavailable?” I said, “Just give me your dates.” And he made a mistake. He’d given me this little window, and I was like, “All right, buddy, I’m going to call you on this one.” Again, he’s just a standup guy, and he loves Justin, too, so it was kudos to Jensen for doing that for us.

In the course of that ten-minute conversation, Colter apologizes to Russell. Even though they’ve been communicating for the past two seasons, they really haven’t had that “I know you didn’t do it. I apologize for thinking that you did” kind of conversation.

Will that conversation help Colter start to process some of this pain from the past? It sounds like no. It sounds like he’s still going to be stuck.

Well, it’s funny. You’re very perceptive because I think what you’re asking, which I like, is that Colter doesn’t say a lot, and I guess I’m guilty of this, too. I am always suspicious of those shows, and particularly because I’m a guy, of course, where guys just sit there and talk ad nauseam about their true feelings.

I think guys talk around things. You know what I mean? It’s what they’re not saying.

And so, I found it really interesting because it wasn’t that Colter was spilling his heart in that scene with Russell. Both brothers were talking around this big cancer in their family, of what happened with their dad, who was this guy that went off the deep end and became abusive.

And now, “Oh shit, Mom may have had something to do with his murder.” That’s some heavy shit. I did not want them to be on a therapy couch.

I wanted them to talk around it. And I think you’ve got exactly what I’m hoping the audience will get, which is that there’s a lot of dead silence in there where the brothers are saying things, but you know that it’s still sitting with them.

That’s what’s fun about writing that scene, because those two actors were able to just let it be. They didn’t feel like they had to dot every “I” and cross every “T” to go, “I’m sad because Dad did this.” You get the sense, at least I did when we were writing it, that Colter was going to carry that.

He did have to apologize to Russell, of course, and at the same time, we’re all human. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is accept an apology or hear an apology. It’s very fucking hard.

I think what was interesting about that was that Russell was upset that his brother thought this about him.

But remember, Russell also was older, saw things that his brother probably didn’t see, and probably kept some of that from his brother, just like you do if you have brothers or sisters. Siblings protect each other; they all do, and that’s a really interesting dynamic.

It was so fun to play that going in, and both of the guys, I didn’t have to talk to them because they’re total pros, they knew it wasn’t going to be settled in that scene. They were going to say what they were going to say, and both of these brothers were going to walk out.

Russell’s going to walk out, going, “You know what? He is still nursing this grudge. He still wants to know what happened to our family.” And Colter walked out of that conversation saying, “You know what? Something led to my family exploding. I want to know what that is,” and that’s going to carry that through the season a little bit.

Yeah.

So again, that’s the luxury of having those two actors.

It feels like there’s a lot of stuff between them, but they’re still brothers. That’s what I took from it, which was really lovely.

No, thank you. Good question.

And you just answered my next one: Are we going to continue to see more of the family drama piece by piece throughout Tracker this season?

Yes.

Good.

Not that I know the secret sauce of the show. But I do think it’s one of the things that makes Colter stand out as a character on network television. There’s a bit of a darkness to him. He’s a guy who is very good at finding people and things, but he’s not necessarily good at finding out what makes him hurt inside.

That’s one of the things that, again, is not serviced in dialogue, but you understand. Here’s a guy who’s really been through something, but he can’t figure out, he cannot find out or figure out what the fuck happened to his family when he was a kid, and that eats at him. Justin just automatically plays it.

I don’t need to talk to him about it. It’s already there. He knows it’s there.

Love that.

The Shaw family stuff is a big part of the opening hour, but there’s also a fascinating case, The Process. What can you tease for us about what we can expect in part two of the mystery?

Well, okay, interesting. The Process, as we learn, is almost like an organism or a virus. It has now reached out and touched Colter and Russell, and getting to the bottom of that and trying to root out The Process is what episode two is about.

I know some really fun twists and turns about how they get there. I know there’s a little bit of Easter egg there. As the brothers are together, they’re able to talk a little bit more about what happened with their family or hear what happened with their family.

I’m always interested in those stories where things from the past have power in the present, and what you learn with The Process is that this thing has its roots in the past, not with Colter, but this sick game that got started was something that got started a while ago and has been going on for a while.

We also see Reenie and Randy together in the opening hour. I love Randy. I thought he was such a great addition last season, and I love his dynamic with Colter. And I like the dynamic with Reenie. Is Reenie and Randy a pairing that we might get to see a lot more of this season on Tracker?

Oh, yeah.

Good.

I think I’ve said this before. Chris Lee’s a friend of mine, so he plays Randy, and when the opportunity came out, he would always hit me up, going, “Come on, Elwood. When am I going to get on Tracker? When am I going to get on Tracker?” He’d text all the time.

What I was really hoping for was to get him for more than just a one-shot thing. Then the opportunity came up because we had to fill some holes in the plot last year about expanding Bobby’s world and bringing in this Randy character, who may or may not have taught Bobby a bunch of stuff.

I’m completely biased, but Chris came in there and crushed it from the first scene, and he crushed it in a weird way because he had chemistry with everybody. That’s Chris as a person. As a writer, it made my case really easy because we just kept writing for him.

Of course, I have to write for Justin because he’s the lead of the show, but when it comes to these other characters, the actors make a case for themselves. And Randy’s so much fun to write for, Chris is, that he created his own space.

One of the challenges from this season and last season is that the show is going to get boring if every scene is a phone call between four different characters, and you want to get the characters together. It really did help planting Randy in Reenie’s office, and that’s going to be a permanent thing.

We’re not going to make a big deal of it, but it’s going to be a permanent thing.

Because remember, she’s reeling from all the stuff that happened to her last season, and I think she’s trying to get her life together, and she brings Randy up, and she likes having Randy. And then we’re going to bring another character into the office, too, that will fill out that world.

We’re trying to fill out that world of Colter’s, so it isn’t just all cutting away to them. “Oh, hey Colter, here’s your legal advice. Oh, hey Colter, here’s your hacking advice.”

Again, Chris and Fiona, who employ Reenie, bring so much. I want to build those worlds out more, and having Randy in the office with Reenie is going to give us that opportunity, a huge opportunity, because he’s so much fun. Even when he’s doing the boring shit like telling Colter where to go on a map, Chris makes it fun. I don’t know what it is.

No, he’s great. The Reno episode was my favorite episode last season.

He’ll be flattered. He was so nervous about that. I’m going to tell him.

It was great!

We were trying to get him to sing. Throughout the whole episode, we kept going, “How can we get him to sing?” We couldn’t figure out how to do it, because he can really sing and dance. He’s no joke. He toured in Hamilton. We’re still going to figure out a way to do it.

We had this whole scene where he was going to do karaoke. That’s how we got into the whole episode. It was like, “How can we show off Chris’s skills?” None of that ended up in the episode, but we’re still going to do it.

Again, that’s the fun of the show; some of these other characters come in and make a case for themselves, and the actors do too. Chris did that.

Tracker is a show that balances emotional stories with adventures, and they mesh together within the cases and with whatever Colter’s got going on, or Reenie, or anyone else.

What would you say, at least to the point that you’ve filmed so far, is at the core of this season? What’s the idea or the feeling that’s driving this season forward?

Well, I think you touched on it with your first question about how we find Colter in the beginning. To me, that’s the template for the show because he’s a network leading man who has this dark past, but he doesn’t talk to the people that he’s searching for. “Oh, I had an abusive childhood. Oh, my dad got killed by my mom.”

He doesn’t talk about that, but the audience knows that it’s there.

I know we do the adventure episode where he’s out running around in the woods and all the other nonsense. But to me, the heart of the show is always, and this is more of a testimony to Justin as an actor, when he emotionally comes in and says, “I’m going to help you,” and then he goes on that emotional ride with the audience.

Because, unlike a dead body show, hopefully, the person’s still alive when he finds him, so he’s the guy that is out there trying to get that result. That is the heart of the show, and I think that is what it feels like. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a weird tweak on the formula, and again, I think Justin is uniquely qualified to carry that off.

It’s just what you get with that actor.

Because if you notice, there’s not a lot of fancy dialogue in the show. I can’t take a lot of credit for the writing. It’s about setting up these emotional storylines for Justin, with his skills, to be able to deliver and relate to people. When the episodes click, it’s when he really empathizes or cares about the people he’s trying to find or trying to help.

To me, that’s the show. All the other shit — gun battles, car chases, who cares? It’s that. We’re breaking episodes all the time. If we don’t have that, the show doesn’t work. I throw out all kinds of crazy episodes. It has to have that emotional connection. And there’s something old-fashioned about that. 

It’s not snarky, it’s not jaded, but he cares. I know that sounds weird, but he cares. He’s earnest, and that’s something I find in short order on television.

Conversations like this are what make television so wonderful. Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to seeing from Tracker this season.

You can watch Tracker on Sundays at 8/7c on CBS.

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