If you’re still reeling from that cliffhanger at the end of Tracker Season 3 Episode 9, you are not alone.
When Colter and Keaton linked up again to search for Keaton’s old partner, who’d gone missing, they had no idea they’d soon find themselves mixed up with dead bodies and assassins, leaving the fate of both men up in the air as the screen faded to black.
With a jaw-dropping twist like that, we had to speak with showrunner Elwood Reid about the hour and what’s ahead when the show returns in 2026.
Aside from just the cliffhanger, there was so much to cover with Reid, as Tracker Season 3 came out the gate guns blazing with secrets lurking around every corner.
As it turns out, the second half of the season will delve into many of the storylines from the first half, including the Shaw family drama, Reenie’s new case, and Mel’s continued integration into the fold (spoiler alert: Reid knows we’re suspicious of Mel, and he doesn’t get it!).
Reid is nothing short of wonderful to speak with, offering candid insights and an infectious enthusiasm for the Tracker world he gets to craft and play with week in and week out.
We covered a lot, so enjoy it, Tracker fans!
I have a bone to pick with you about that ending, that cliffhanger. Keaton is one of my favorite tertiary characters in the Tracker universe. So, was it always going to be Keaton that was going to be part of this cliffhanger and part of the storyline with Colter for the midseason finale?
No, but you know what’s funny, you say that? I’ve been asked this question before. It’s so hard to tell, from an audience member’s standpoint, if this character that you bring on resonates with anybody. And when we first wrote the Keaton character, we kind of thought he had the potential to do that.
And then we had the right piece of casting with Brent Sexton, I thought, who really delivered it. He did go on that dark journey with Colter. So it’s interesting to hear you say that he felt present in that universe because when you’re doing so many episodes, you just never know what characters the audience gravitates towards.
I love hearing that you felt like he was worthy of that promotion, to use a word. He was a guy that we’d been, oddly enough, meaning to use in Reenie’s office.
There’s that line of dialogue on the top of nine, when Mel’s looking for private investigators, and Reenie talks about Keaton. It’s something we’re going to try to do … have Keaton be brought into Reenie’s office. But then Keaton beats him to the punch by calling Colter for something personal.
It’s a quid pro quo. “I helped you with your thing, you’re going to help me with my thing.” So it’s interesting, you just never know. And sometimes we write characters we thought might recur, but it doesn’t work on the page, or the storyline doesn’t work. But he was one of those we really hoped would do it.
I’m glad to hear you say that you feel something for him, because then we did our job.
I was so upset at the end; I was thinking he’d go on a date with the waitress at the diner someday, and that something good would happen to him, but I guess we’ll see.
I don’t think we’ve seen the last of that waitress because we had such fun writing that scene, and that woman came in and just blew our doors off casting. That was her audition. She just came in.
I was like, “She’s had to have done the job before.” So it was so much fun. But I mean, again, he’s a fun character. He’s the kind of guy who can bust balls with a waitress and get away with it. That was fun.
But speaking on the cliffhanger, obviously without giving everything away, what can you tell us about what we can expect from the storyline when the series returns?
It picks right up. I’m not going to speak to who lives or dies out of that car, but suffice it to say, Colter doesn’t just jump up and dust himself off. He’s got some severe problems. But as you know, the assassin and the rest of the case are ongoing, and we’re going to learn that there is somebody who needs saving, and it comes from a weird place.
So we just had a lot of fun tying all those threads together. And it was also an opportunity for us because we had a two-parter, we could set up more complicated, I hate to use the word ‘complicated,’ but more backstory, more kind of like, what are the cops up to?
Who are these mobsters? What’s going on here? Why did Keaton’s old partner get involved in this? What was he up to?
Those are things that are really hard to do in one hour, but when you’re given two hours, you can stretch them out a little bit more. So we had fun playing with that, as I don’t want to say, ‘police noir,’ because Colter’s an ex-cop, just being able to tell that bigger, more complicated storytelling was fun, but hard as hell.
I don’t want to do another one like that. It was hard, but it was fun.
Speaking on the two-parters — because you opened the season with a two-parter and now you have this two-parter — is that something you want to continue moving forward?
No. No.
No?
You’re killing me, Whitney. Are you kidding me? I keep telling the writers, I was like, “Guys, if someone’s suggesting another two-parter, I’m going to shoot you. And if I suggest doing it, just kill me.”
They’re so hard because, particularly in this one, when we shoot Colter’s character and throw him off a cliff, we had to get all that story across, and they have to make sense across two episodes. I say that, but who knows? We may end up doing one at the end. They’re fun, but they’re super challenging.
Just from a writing sense, because the show works best when someone comes in and says, “Colter, my kid’s missing, my husband’s missing, my wife’s missing. You help me.” And then it’s a very satisfying hour of television.
If we have the motor, and I think we really did the motor really well in the first two episodes, The Process, with this evil thing that was out there. So that motor lent itself. This one had a different kind of motor that took us a long time to figure out.
And there are some possible two-parter personal stories that we could get into. And there’s definitely some fun stuff to get into with Reenie, but only if we see it. Sometimes you say we’re doing a two-parter, you go, “Oh boy, I only have enough material for one episode and a half. What am I going to do?”
Right.
When I watch those shows, it’s even when I watch serialized storytelling, because I used to do that all the time. Sometimes you go, “You know what? Those 10 episodes could have been three.” And I never want the audience to feel that way. You feel like you’re stretching things out just to stretch things out.
Yeah, it makes sense. At the beginning of the season and throughout this season, a little bit at a time, episode by episode, we’re seeing Colter continue to look into the mysteries of Ashton and everything, right?
Mm-hmm.
But we haven’t seen him talk about it anywhere else, outside his talk to Russell. We haven’t seen him talk to his mother. We haven’t seen him talk to Dory.
That’s coming. Mother’s coming.
Oh, good.
Yeah, and there’s an episode where he has to run down some secret about his father’s past, and he’s kind of got Randy on the sly looking for it. And there’s going to be a case where Randy is with Colter, which is going to be fun, after the back half of the season, and it’ll give him a chance to talk about this. It’s fun.
I always learn something when I talk to you, people, interviewers like this, because you remind me of connections I may have forgotten, and that’s a connection. Randy’s been the primary guy he trusts to sniff around. And we have an episode coming up that we’re actually writing right now, where Randy is with him a little bit.
So there’s some opportunity to divulge some of that stuff.
Yeah, because he’s telling Randy, but he’s not really confiding in Randy. Randy’s just looking for information, but he doesn’t really know what it’s all about.
Yeah.
So that’ll be good to see.
Then you touched on Reenie a little bit, too, because she’s been having a tough time this season, but again, not really talking about it. Are we going to see Reenie reach a breaking point, or what can we expect to see from her in the second half?
We’re going to see her continue to act out a little bit or continue to have problems, but there’s also a case that’s going to start. There’s been this thing we’ve been teasing about this person trying to hire Reenie to do some of the work, and we’re going to involve Melanie.
We’re going to bring a character on for a good piece of casting that’s coming up, where this character comes into the office and is looking to hire Reenie, not anything related to Colter or missing people.
And I think the natural inclination is, “Oh, this woman’s up to some kind of dirt.” But we’re going to see this case develop, and these two, the piece of casting is a woman, see these two women really get into some hot water together, but also have an emotional relationship.
For the show to be healthy, the other characters can’t just sit around waiting by the phone. And it’s helpful when we learn a little about everyone. In this other case, we’re going to learn some stuff about Randy. It’s just slowly, in dribs and drabs, getting the Reenie storyline out there, I think, is fun.
It’s fun when we follow her home because she’s a different flavor than Colter. Colter almost gives you nothing.
He gives you a little bit. You just have to look for it.
You have to lean in, which I think is a good thing. And then you got Fiona, Reenie, who’s kind of all over the place, which I believe is what makes them a fun contrast.
It’s interesting you just mentioned bringing in somebody, and then the natural inclination is going to be like, “Oh, she’s up to no good.” So that’s what I got when Mel came in. My spidey senses were telling me there’s something there.
I know. You guys are so evil. I don’t know why everyone thinks this. You guys are bad people. Everyone says, “She’s up to…” I was like, “Why is she up to something? She’s a nice young lady who’s coming in for a job.” Everyone says that. It’s so funny. I mean, everyone.
I think that she does have some skeletons or secrets. And again, we didn’t know where the character was going to go until I saw the actor come in and play it. And I was really pleasantly surprised, but even then, people still think she’s up to something.
She’s trying to screw over Colter. She’s going to screw over someone. We may end up playing with that idea. I mean, I cannot believe everyone says that. It’s like, you guys are so suspicious.
It was because she came in with this backstory about a mystery, and then she was interested in Colter and Reenie and all that. And I was like, “Is there a connection?” Maybe there’s some connection between her and Colter. And the fact that they haven’t met yet, I was like, “They’re building towards something.”
Justin has crazy pitches, by the way. Never ask him about this. But no, I mean, again, just trying to fill out these characters like Randy and now Mel and Reenie, we have to put some money in the bank. So, it was fun to give her a backstory.
I mean, I don’t want to give it away, but if you think about what happened to her and you think about what happened to Colter, they have some similarities, that loss of a parent. I think it’ll, again, be about finding emotional pivots for culture, people who, if you think about it, don’t know that much.
He keeps a lot of it away from his team. I don’t know if Mel is someone he’d be able to do that with, because she’s got that fresh wound of losing a parent, which is interesting.
Yeah. Are we going to see them all together? I know you said that Colter’s going to be working with Randy.
Yeah, I think we will. I think we will. I think that was the big experiment this year, bringing Randy to the office to see how that would work. And I think it worked really well because Chris is such a physical actor. He’s always moving around.
When you box him in front of a computer screen, it’s like Chris is a friend of mine. I know all of his other skills outside of the show. We weren’t using him all the way. So it’s been really fun to see his character grow. He just took over that office in a fun way, but that’s Chris.
What can you tease for us? You’ve already teased a lot during this interview, but maybe some fun cases or some fun guest stars.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, the case I was talking about with Reenie is going to go somewhere and be interesting. Randy has a friend who goes missing under some very strange circumstances. We’re working on that episode right now, and that will lend itself to a fun episode.
There’s also going to be some of that backstory with what happened back in Echo Ridge, and it’s going to come back up. So that will start in the back half of the season, and we’ll begin building that in a little bit.
And, of course, as you also pointed out, we owe the scene with his mother, which is coming up. But the writers, we’re still working on, what do we want to do with that scene? And again, there’s always hope we can get Russell back for an episode or two.
I would love to see Italia Ricci’s character again.
So fun.
Because things were left open-ended, and you guys tend not to leave much open-ended in the thing. And I was like, “Oh, she’s got to come back somehow.”
It’s interesting you say that, because that was a character designed to work if we cast it right. And I think she killed it. She’s an interesting character because Colter’s always quote unquote, “helping good people.”
Now, he didn’t help her, but they both looked at each other, and it was an interesting thing where he knew that she had done some dirt, but he also recognized that she was pretty fucking good. So it was a really interesting chemistry. And again, I didn’t give those guys anything when they did that scene.
I was hoping he wouldn’t be too judgmental or look at her like, “I should throw you in jail.” But instead, it was just two alpha predators circling each other, going, “Oh, okay. Game recognizing game.” It was just fun. And again, that’s a character we want to bring back.
Great, fingers crossed!
No, I’m glad you liked her. Again, I hate to say this, but it does help me when I hear this because I never know. You throw these characters out there, and you never know who they’re going to like. It’s funny that she resonated with you, so that’s a good sign.
***This interview has been edited for length and clarity.***
Tracker will return on March 1st, 2026, at its NEW time of 9/8c on CBS.
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The post Tracker Showrunner Elwood Reid Teases the Fallout From That Brutal Cliffhanger: “Colter Doesn’t Just Dust Himself Off” appeared first on TV Fanatic.
