Just when Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) thinks that he may know what led to his father’s death years ago, something comes up to change everything.
The Tracker Season 1 finale sees him help an old friend, Lizzy (Jennifer Morrison, in a This Is Us reunion), find her missing daughter. Then, she reveals that her mother and his father had an affair. After her mother’s death, Lizzy found a file box with research papers and journals she realized belonged to his father (a memory surfaced of a visit she witnessed as a kid). Lizzy told Colter’s sister, Dory (Melissa Roxburgh), about it, and she had her send it to her. But Dory didn’t mention that when he saw her recently…
Below, Hartley breaks down the Shaw family drama and mysteries, reveals who will be back in Season 2, and much more.
This has been quite the rollercoaster of a season when it comes to Colter’s family, and he still doesn’t seem to have any answers. Instead, there have just been reveals like the government work, now the affair to lead into Season 2.
I think it’s very, very cool that this guy who has all the answers, Colter Shaw, who figures everything out and has his world figured out and it’s very simple, thought something and is now realizing that it’s completely different than what he thought. I love the idea of a twist. There is a huge twist because now it’s like, wait a minute, someone else has a motive now. The person out there who killed my father is still out there, maybe. I don’t know if this man’s still alive or whatever. Russell [Jensen Ackles] said there was another man out there and now I find out about an affair and I’m like, wait a minute, that looks like very strong motive. I love the mystery of it.
There’s all the government work, too, and all of these things when you’re like, “Oh, my dad’s nuts. He’s going paranoid, the government’s after him, people are going to kill us.” And now the more Colter’s finding out about this stuff, he’s like, “Wait a minute, was this lunatic actually onto something? Let’s revisit this.” And why are people hiding all this stuff from him? It’s just a lot of mystery and I love the way that our writers wrapped up Season 1 and answered a lot of questions and you feel really satisfied when you watch the episode—at least I did, and I hope everyone else does. But at the same time, it certainly does lead to a holy hell for Season 2. I love that, too, the lead-in for Season 2 and the big cliffhanger.
At this point, does Colter perhaps trust Russell the most out of any of his family members? Not that he trusts him completely, but it seems like Russell is maybe being the most honest with him.
It seems that way. Isn’t that strange how that got turned on its head? He’s not spilling all the beans. I also suspect that there are things that he’s withholding as well and there’s a reason for that as well. As far as Colter’s concerned, I don’t think Colter’s like, “I can trust my brother 100 percent.” I think if he is the percentage guy, the percentages that he thought he could trust all of those people in his family went way down after this season finale. I think Russell’s went way up and then it ticked down a little bit because of everything that he found out. But yeah, he certainly had an idea about what his life was and the circumstances behind his father’s death. It really seems to be all signs point to he was wrong about it, so we’ll see.
Lizzy suggests that Colter talk to his mom, but he says no. Does he want to have more information before talking to her or is he just not ready to do so?
No, I think he needs more information before he talks to her because he certainly doesn’t trust her. And imagine going from thinking that your brother killed your father to now thinking that your mother had something to do with his death. That’s kind of bizarre as well. So yeah, there’s a lot going on there. I think he just has to get his brain wrapped around all this stuff before he opens his mouth. That’s probably what he is thinking. I’m rubbing my head as I’m thinking about it. I would want more information before I spoke to that person.
Do you know of any plans yet to see Russell and Dory again in Season 2?
Yeah, we have plans to—here are our grand plans. We hope to bring both of them back. We hope to bring Jennifer Morrison back because I think she has more story to tell. We hope to bring Sofia Pernas back, my wife. I know a guy who could talk to her who could get her back. I think we’ll be able to do that hopefully. I think all of those characters have a lot more story to tell and more information that can lead to more answers for Colter.
And I love a job-of-the-week show. I love the procedural aspect of the show, but I think it’s so rich when you bring those characters’ backstories in and you sprinkle ’em in here and there sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. Sometimes the case even leads to Colter’s backstory. I think that’s such a rich procedural show because otherwise you just have a guy with a gun chasing around bad people, which I think is kind of boring.
Yeah, that’s how he got that file, with the case-of-the-week.
Exactly. Yeah, I just think that’s so cool when you tie in things like that and it makes it worth it to stay tuned and watch and pay attention as opposed to just, here’s another case of the week. I don’t know. I’m not interested in that.
It seems like this is leading to a full family reunion, but is that something that Colter is even ready for?
I think that would be something that Colter would try to control—I don’t want to say manipulate—before he signed up for that.
What can you say about the plan for what’s coming up with Colter’s father’s death in Season 2?
We’re going to dive deeper into it and obviously what Colter thought is not the case, but we didn’t answer that question in the finale. We just opened it up to more questions. We’ll dive deeper into the story with the mother, what the hell is going on there? I think Dory and Russell will have more information. There’ll be more backstory with Billie [Pernas] that’s told. We really didn’t answer that question either. They worked together and he feels betrayed, but what happened? And then this whole, she can’t have dinner with him. She gets in really close with him and she pulls herself away. What’s her backstory? What’s she all about? We just have a bunch of rich characters that we have to have to unpack a little bit each one of them and their relationship with Colter.
There’s also this potential slow burn between Colter and Reenie [Fiona Rene]. What was fun about playing that this season, having these teases about where that could be going?
It’s fun, right? That’s another backstory. They have a past that’s kind of a little bit sordid and it seems like they’ve mended those fences a little bit. In the first episode, she came in, when he saw her, he was like, “Oh Christ, they called her and I know she can get me out of jail, but now I got to deal with this. We didn’t leave everything on good terms.” He’s a little embarrassed about the whole thing. She’s pissed off, I don’t know, thinks he’s kind of a cad, and I think he’s won her over a little bit. She realizes that’s really not who he is. Two were playing that game. It wasn’t just one person, right?
But it’s a fun relationship.
Yeah, I think so, too. I think it’s interesting, the fact that she can help him in unique ways like he doesn’t know the law like she does. We will see what happens. I think as long as we keep it interesting, people will be interested.
Talk about bringing in Melissa, Jensen, and Jennifer for these last three episodes in these key roles in Colter’s life and working with them—great casting.
Thank you very much. I have really great friendships in this town. Those were just phone calls. Jensen and I have been friends for a long, long time and we’ve never worked together. We’re always busy doing other things and I’ve always admired him and his work and his work ethic and his reputation and just in hanging out with him as a friend, he’s a really great dude. And he texted me when he was watching football, “I’m trying to watch the game. Will you please get your mug off my screen?” And I text him back, “Do you want to come play my brother?” And he said, “When and where?” And that’s how that went. And then he came and he crushed it. He just did an awesome job and it was so fun. That was a lot of work, a lot of work for both of us, but he was game. He had a great time and we got a chance to hang out with him. I hadn’t seen him in a while.
And then Melissa is a friend and I’ve admired her work as well. She’s such a great actor. That was just sort of like, “Come play, come do this. We got this really great role for you. I think you’re perfect for it.” And then Jennifer was the same kind of way.
I feel so lucky. I can’t keep up with our guest cast. Every time I walk into a room, it’s a TV star and then me, I’m like, what is going on here? I’m working with all these phenomenal actors. I love it.
And then you had Jon Huertas come in and direct. You just need to get him on screen.
Yeah, we need to get him on screen. He’s going to come back and direct more if the schedule works out. He did a great job. That was a very difficult episode and he just nailed it. Tonally, it was different than anything we had done. But he was awesome. He knows how to direct actors. He’s an actor’s director. He is an actor at heart, so he knows how to talk to actors. Everyone’s different. Some people need more handholding than others, which is not a bad thing. It’s just the way people are built. I kind of like to be left alone, but he’s wonderful and we were lucky to have him, too. It all worked out and we’re going to work really, really hard to get everybody back. We need all those guys back.
Is there anything you want to do more of or different with the team behind Colter? Because I feel like seeing Teddi (Robin Weigert), Velma (Abby McEnany), and Bobby (Eric Graise) in different situations could be fun.
Yeah, I think we will, now that we have time to do that, because doing 22 episodes next year instead of 13, we have a little more time. So I think we’ll dive into those characters a little more and see them do more stuff. I think we can have them doing things away from Colter more so than we had in Season 1, a little bit more, maybe 10, 20 percent more. I don’t know. We’ll see what the writers do. … We have some ideas. I know we have some ideas in the cooker right now. They’re really, really cool ideas that I don’t think anyone will see coming—that make sense, by the way. It’s not jumping the shark.
What else can you say about Season 2?
I come from the sort of line of thinking where if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But that doesn’t mean that if you have a really great car and the car’s wonderful and you love the car that it doesn’t need a tune-up every once in a while and you can change the tires and you can put a coat of wax on it and you can change the rims and you can put a new radio in it. So we definitely have fun things that we haven’t done and way more dangerous stuff that we weren’t able to do in Season 1.
Now we just have more time and space and we don’t have the burden of explaining who we are and what we’re doing anymore. I think the word is out. People watch the show and they tend to like it. So we can just go on that and tell more complicated stories that go deeper into our other cast, our supporting casts. I think that’s where we are right now, which is a very cool place to be. We’ve created a ton of characters that are very, very interesting, from our core group to our guest stars, we brought in the brother, the sister, my wife Sofia—I shouldn’t even say my wife, Sofia Pernas. We brought her in. We’ve got Jennifer Morrison who I think has more story to tell. So we’ve surrounded ourselves with some really great, talented actors. We’re going to bring all of them back if I have to drag them there myself.
Have you talked at all about doing more flashbacks? Because you did start with that in the premiere, and then even just talking about what happened between Colter and Billie, that’s just ripe for a great flashback episode.
That’s an idea I hadn’t thought of. That story is going to be told in Season 2, but I don’t know how many episodes it’ll take to tell that story. We’ll probably pepper it in a little bit at a time, but I don’t know if that’ll be told in flashbacks or [not]. We kind of told the backstory with them when they were looking for that safe, right? When you found out that, oh, he felt like she screwed him over and she was like, no, no, no, you were arrogant about all that kind of stuff. Maybe the story will be told that way. I don’t know if we’ll do flashbacks. What would you put me in a mullet or something? What were people wearing back then? I don’t really want to wear a mullet.
