[This story contains spoilers from the season two finale of Tracker.]
It was inevitable. Two seasons of the CBS hit action drama, Tracker, starring Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw, found the protagonist, a nationwide finder of missing people, never quite able to solve the mystery of who killed his father many decades ago when he was a teenager. The tragic event has lingered with and haunted Colter all the way into adulthood and alienated him from much of his family.
For many years, Colter blamed his older brother Russell Shaw (Jensen Ackles) for seemingly having a direct impact on their father, Ashton (Lee Tergesen), falling off of a cliff to his death in the woods near the town of “Echo Ridge” (also the name of the final episode). Ashton, a brilliant professor at Berkeley University, moved his wife, Mary Dove (Wendy Crewson) and their three children (sister Dory played by Melissa Roxburgh rounds out the siblings) to live off the grid after Ashton feared a discovery of his would put his family’s lives in jeopardy by the government.
But in the last minutes of the season two finale “Echo Ridge,” Colter is able to trace down and find a man named Otto (Alex Fernandez), who is the uncle of serial pedophile and child trafficker Carl Murphy, who Colter was hot on the trail of after a beloved town restaurant owner named Billy disappeared while investigating the suspicious Murphy, with a scared little boy he brought to the restaurant to eat one night. Billy starts asking questions and ended up missing. His wife hired Colter — recommended by his mother, Mary — to come back to Echo Ridge and look for the missing restaurant entrepreneur. Colter, with the help of his staff and an old friend in the government protected forest, find Murphy’s home and the body of the missing entrepreneur his truck.
But that’s not the only shocking thing that Colter finds on Murphy’s property. He also finds in the pedophile’s house a wood carving of a wolf that his dad, Ashton, made many years ago. Colter’s crew eventually locates the rendezvous point where Murphy is going to hand off stolen boys in the trafficking network. He quickly puts an end to the boys’ captors. But he only severely wounds Murphy with gunshots so that he can extract two pieces of information from him: where were the children taken that were already moved, and how in the hell did he end up with is father’s carving?
In the final scene, Colter arrives to Otto’s home, and the uncle of Murphy makes some startling confessions. “I spent most of my life trying to find out what happened that night,” a highly emotional Colter explains to Otto. Otto responds, telling the tracker that his dad had many enemies.
Colter pulls out his pistol. “That night my father went over the cliff, that was you? It was you in the woods that night. Say it, say it!”
Otto confesses that it was him, and that he threw Ashton off the cliff, but that he didn’t work for the CIA or any government agency. An emotional Colter asks why?
“Because she asked for my help,” Otto solemnly responds. When Colter asks who “she” is, Otto speaks two words that pierce Colter’s heart as his tears start to flow: “Your mother.“
But Tracker showrunner and writer of the finale, Elwood Reid, says viewers still don’t have the definitive answer they think they might have received during that shocking season ender. Even Reid didn’t know from the very beginning that Colter’s father’s death would be the result of actions taken by Mary Dove Shaw.
“When I write, I tend not to outline very much or pitch out much,” Reid explains to The Hollywood Reporter about the process of writing that pivotal last scene for the finale. “We wanted to have an episode where Colter was going to learn something about his past. And the idea began to develop, like it has to go back to his mother. But we didn’t know how that was going to land until we started writing that last scene. And it just was there and it was natural. I didn’t want it to be cheesy or over the top, but it just felt real the way we did it. And I think that was a testimony to Justin as an actor. I don’t need to write very much for him; I just put him in the scenes and he brings a lot to it emotionally. I have the luxury of writing for a guy like that.”
Reid continues, “But to answer your question, I suspected but didn’t know. And we still haven’t unpacked what next season is going to look like. (Colter) doesn’t have all the answers, but I don’t think he’s ever going to get all the answers.”
While the season two finale doesn’t appear to neatly wrap up the storyline of Ashton Shaw’s death, it sets up the already renewed third season by walking the tightrope of dealing with the darkness of child trafficking along with revealing answers in the death of Ashton Shaw.
Tracker’s writers, meanwhile, are convening soon to answer these questions. Filming on season three begins likely in July, says the star.
“We were giving bombs out there,” Hartley tells THR, as he enthusiastically discusses the finale. “Yeah it’s a tricky one. I think that has a lot to do with our writing staff and the story they put together. And then the tone that [executive producer] Ken Olin — he directed the episode — wanted was to make sure that it wasn’t something that we glossed over; it’s a very intense subject matter. We were very aware of that; we were very sensitive to that. These are things that happen in real life, unfortunately. Our world is plagued with these things, unfortunately. And so we try not to sidestep really tough subject matter; we try to go right through the front door and deal with them. We’re lucky we have really great writers and we have someone like Ken Olin who comes in and directs an episode like that.”
Hartley continues, “I feel like we hit the right tone. And at the same time, we’re telling the story at the end with the father’s death and Colter finding out all that information that he never knew. So, we’re doing a bunch of things at once. And we’re also trying to create a show that is, at the end of the day, entertaining our audience. I’m really proud of it. I think it’s the best episode we’ve ever done, and hopefully everyone feels the same.”
As for continuing the storyline next season, Reid says, “I think Colter is going to get an answer; he’s going to get some lies. I mean, look, it’s families. Families are fucking messy. Family will lie to your face.
“What’s interesting about Colter, it’s like, what does he do with whatever his mom tells him? Does he believe her? Can he forgive her, even if she tells him the whole truth? I don’t know,” he says. “I think there is a much bigger mystery with what his father was up to that caused him to go off the deep end, that I think we’re going to get into as the season goes on, and hopefully be able to bring back his sister, his brother. We’re going to play with those things. I think that’s what makes the show special, to have that emotional element.”
What’s not revealed to the audience after the tears start flowing from Colter’s eyes is if the alleged murderer catches some bullets from Colter. Viewers won’t know Otto’s fate until next season.
“We’re going to pick up the aftermath in season three,” Reid continues. “The gun thing was something we didn’t express in any script right away when discussing with Justin. It became apparent this is a question he’s been asking his entire life. I don’t think he went in there thinking he’s going to pull that gun. But the guy gives him this answer that is so fucked up, he’s not even thinking about it, he just pulls the gun. And you get to see him in such a rare moment. I think that Justin did a really good job in his performance. He was out of control for a few seconds. You see him struggle to bring that down. He is going to take that same emotion to his mother, which I think is going to be really interesting.”
It was a five page scene and Hartley did two takes. “Justin was so locked in,” says Reid, “and Alex Fernandez, who played Otto, was so locked in. You don’t get many moments like that as a writer, to be on set when that stuff is happening.”
Hartley saw a similar path as to how season two could end while also give more clarity on what happened to Colter’s father. Why would his mother want her husband’s life? Hartley has his theories.
“I think she’s going to do anything to protect her children,” says Hartley. “And when you feel that your children are in harm’s way, that’s a desperate thing that calls for desperate measures. I think that’s sort of where that came from. If you’re talking about dire circumstances, people do people do crazy things.”
Reid added his thoughts about Mary being implicated in her husband’s death.
“If you think back to the scene, Otto doesn’t say ‘she told me to kill him,’” Reid adds. “ Colter asked, ‘Why were you up there, and he’s like, ‘Because she asked me to be — your mother.’ So, she asked him to be up there, but we don’t know what for. We’re going to learn that at the top of season three. I think that answer is going to be much more complicated than you think. Both of those guys gace been waiting for that moment for a long time.”
