Tracker Season 3 Premiere Reunites Shaw Brothers for Twisty Case

Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

4.5

Welcome back to Tracker land, folks!

Colter’s still reeling. Jensen Ackles is back. And the Shaw brothers just stumbled into their weirdest and potentially most deadly case of all.

What a start to Tracker Season 3!

Listen, coming into this new season, a lot of people were hoping things would pick up right where they left off with Colter and Otto getting into the nitty-gritty about what happened up on that cliff.

The revelation at the end of Tracker Season 2 Episode 20 was by far the most critical piece of information we’ve received about the Shaw family drama, and that conversation was far from over.

But it’s television, and instead of returning to Colter’s confused and heartbroken face, we got a time jump of a few weeks that honestly annoyed me at first.

Shows love to skip over essential events sometimes, summing them up in a little information dump instead of allowing the audience to immerse themselves in those tough conversations alongside the characters.

But once things played out, with Russell tracking Colter down and the two of them having this elongated and decidedly raw talk about what Colter learned, the past, and what to do moving forward, I understood that the better play was having the audience learn more about Colter and Otto’s talk for the first time alongside Russell.

Colter’s been tortured by what happened to his father and the pains from his adolescence his whole life.

It may not dominate his every move, and he does a hell of a job trying to suppress his feelings to the point that the casual acquaintance would never know internally how much the past eats him up inside, but he can’t hide that way from Russell.

Taking himself off the grid was dire enough for Reenie to send Russell after him, and it didn’t take long for Colter to tell Russell everything he knew, and while it was an information dump, it was also a highly charged moment that was able to breathe.

Anyone who watched Justin Hartley in This is Us knows that he can nail an emotional beat with the best of them. Still, Tracker has never been the kind of show that needs him to get to these super deep, emotional places unless it’s dealing with things regarding his family.

Colter confiding in Russell was so beautifully done, with these big moments of silence between the two brothers, as they processed and observed one another, and even though these are grown men now, with years of hard life experience, it just honestly felt like a big brother and little brother moment.

Colter talked, Russell listened, and when Colter apologized after YEARS of ghosting his brother and believing the very worst about him (for valid reasons or not), Russell didn’t make him feel bad about it or throw anything back in his face.

In typical Russell fashion, he often deflected or made a joke where possible as a means to lighten the mood. Still, he also validated his brother and made him feel like, even with everything, their relationship was going to be okay, and it was going to be okay.

For as good as Hartley is in these kinds of scenes, Jensen Ackles is just as great, and the two have this amazing dynamic that we’re fortunate to get to see a few times a season.

I appreciated that they allowed both brothers to be the most honest we’ve probably ever seen them, with Colter not pretending like he could shut off his feelings like Russell does, and Russell seeing that for what it was and not leaving him to fester in the past and still searching for answers without offering a hand.

Considering where things started during Tracker Season 1 between them, I’m amazed by how far they’ve come and have slowly taken the steps to strengthen their relationship.

Big brother Russell was, of course, the one to offer up that they get back in the reward game, and again, that felt like his way of trying to get his brother out of his head for a bit.

Getting him back on the road and out of his doom spiraling, if even for a few days, felt to Russell like a healthy alternative to Colter spending his nights drinking beer at random backwoods bars and obsessing in the Airstream every night.

Now, it would probably be better for Colter if his everyday job wasn’t so dangerous, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Their case of the week ended up being much more complicated than it seemed on the surface, and while Tracker loves a conspiracy or a twist, this one had twist upon twist, but nothing felt forced.

What started as the brothers believing that Cal’s wife and daughter were potentially caught up in his ex’s new boyfriend’s pyramid scheme shenanigans, turned odd really quickly when they found said boyfriend dead and missing a hand.

Tracker cases that immediately subvert early expectations are the best kind of cases, and this one kept getting stranger and stranger, especially once it started to look like Lisa may have had nothing to do with the whole plan.

Colter and Russell always make such a fun duo because of how different they are and how they treat everything. Colter’s consistently stoic and by the books, whereas Russell flies by the seat of his pants and makes everything fun, even when it shouldn’t be.

That’s a credit to Jensen Ackles’ ability to bring such charisma to all his roles, and Russell is no exception. There’s something so inherently charming about him that you sometimes forget about the severity of the situation he’s in because he’s damn funny and likable.

Once Colter and Russell tracked down Lisa, with an assist from Reenie and Randy, who are paired up now, things got odd because for a solid moment I thought we were looking at one of those instances where the victim Colter’s looking for was really the culprit.

But when she got hit by the car while trying to get the hell out of dodge and Colter found that burner phone, things only got more complicated from there.

Because they allowed the brothers to have that long moment in the beginning, the case felt a little rushed at times over the back half of the hour. We bounced from Lisa and Haley missing, to the boyfriend dead and handless, to Lisa getting run over, and then a random teacher potentially being the one behind everything?

Someone else pulling the strings was the only option, but what were they after?

Some of this case was giving Saw vibes, in that this anonymous person was sending out all these demands, threatening to hurt people, and doing it in a way that affected several seemingly unconnected people.

The Process was clearly something much bigger than Lisa and Haley, and even Ockman and his sister, and it was a little frustrating how much Colter and Russell were so laser-focused on the Haley of it all that they weren’t seeing there was a much bigger picture.

But at the same time, what were they supposed to do?

Haley’s life was on the line, but so was Ockman’s sister, though they didn’t really seem to be grasping the whole situation because they were on such borrowed time, and they didn’t have anything to go by but the words of the man who seemingly took Haley.

The last few minutes of the episode were kind of a whirlwind, but I just knew Colter and Russell were going to find themselves in danger, and that’s precisely what happened when the Process set its sights on them.

I love a good cliffhanger, and I love that we’re getting more Russell next week, but I don’t love the idea of someone in the brothers’ lives getting taken as a means to get them to play some twisted game.

What are these people after? What did Colter and Russell interrupt?

So many questions to ponder as we wait for what’s next, but at least we know we get another hour of the Shaw brothers kicking ass and confronting generational trauma together.

Tracker Notes

• Reenie and Randy teaming up at her office could be a really good thing. As long as they find a way to get Reenie and Randy out of there sometimes and on the road or actually with Colter, I won’t complain.

• By sending Velma to Teddi and having Bobby get a new job, they’ve left the door open for them to maybe pop up one day.

• The long-running joke about Russell having a thing for Reenie is so silly, but I also ship it. Russell being so bent out of shape that she was dating a lawyer, and Colter pretending to be unbothered by it all was PEAK Shaw brother-ness.

What a great premiere!

There was much to enjoy about the hour, which was very high-flying and jammed a lot into its running time.

Let me know below how you’re feeling about the start to the season, and if you need a refresher about any past Tracker episodes, you can find all the reviews right here.

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