The CBS drama, which returned on Sunday, October 13, drew a total of 8.3 million viewers, up nearly 10 percent from its season 1 finale. The season 2 premiere also marked the show’s highest audience since the series debuted in February after the Super Bowl.
Tracker is the most-watched broadcast since the finale of NCIS with Mark Harmon in September 2021. In the ratings, Tracker even beat out CBS’s reboot of Matlock, which drew 7.7 million viewers in its preview premiere last month.
Based on the novel The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver, Tracker found an immediate audience after its release earlier this year. Following the first season finale, viewership numbers confirmed that Tracker is the most-watched series of the 2023-24 television season. The show was renewed for a second season at the time.
Tracker centers on a survivalist named Colter (Justin Hartley), who travels the country helping people and law enforcement solve various mysteries. As the series unfolds, viewers will learn more about how Colter’s past shapes his present life as a lone wolf.
Hartley, 47, not only stars in the show, but also serves as an executive producer alongside This Is Us producer and director Ken Olin. Hartley’s behind-the-scenes role has allowed him to surprise fans with exciting guest stars — including his wife, Sofia Pernas, and Jensen Ackles.
“I’m excited about it. It’s been a long time coming. Ken Olin and I built this show from the ground up years ago, even before This Is Us finished filming our final season. We’ve been working on this for years, through a pandemic and a strike and all that. “We poured our hearts into this and started working on this, and it seems like a long time ago. It’s definitely a labor of love. I’m really proud of it and I’m so happy to finally have the opportunity for people to see it.”
That same month, the actor opened up about how he makes Colter appealing to all audiences, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “I think a lot of times, it all comes down to this political message or theme. Sometimes we get lost in the shuffle that we’re entertainers. I want people to watch something and be entertained.”
“Colter Shaw is not necessarily driven by an agenda,” he continued. “He’s a businessman. He takes money, that’s how he makes his living. He’s not driven by politics. He’s driven by doing the right thing. And where does that come from? Well, that comes from his childhood, and we’ll explain that in the series.”
“We had another whole season to shoot that we had to do better than season 1. So while we wanted all those storylines to be wrapped up, we also wanted those bows to lead to other questions — bigger, deeper questions — about his past,” Hartley revealed to Deadline in May. “So I think we did that in answering some of the questions that we had been building up over the course of the year. I think we did a good job of making sure that the answers to those questions then led to a bigger mystery, something that we could unpack in season 2.”
