Who’s Watching the Tracker? Government conspiracies and alien sightings come to a head when Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) suddenly goes missing in Season 2, Episode 2, “Ontological Shock,” forcing his team of oddballs to step up and work together like never before. Even Colter’s brother Russell (Jensen Ackles) returns to town to help solve the supernatural mystery.
The episode opens with a man named Scott Palmer (Steven Culp) running through the woods, shooting a creepy found footage video. He claims to be approaching a secret, unexplored DOD location. Then, suddenly, his camera stops working and there’s a bright flash of light. The next thing we know, Colter Shaw is driving to a house in Pennsylvania. Scott’s daughter Patty (Brooke Nevin) hires Colter to find out what’s going on and where her father has gone. Colter learns that Scott is retired, enjoys hiking, has recently become obsessed with government conspiracies, thinks he’s being followed because he knows too much, and has been harassing an astrophysics professor named Dr. Iris Blair (April Parker Jones). Blair’s husband has a restraining order against him. Colter doesn’t believe he’s simply gone off the grid. However, he notices that some of the call logs between Blair and Scott, which Reenie (Fiona Rene) was able to obtain through the restraining order, are quite lengthy. He may have called her multiple times a day, but she stayed to talk. Their relationship may not have been hostile. And when Colter talks to Dr. Blair about Scott, she doesn’t seem scared or nervous about mentioning his name.
In fact, Scott and Blair have been talking about aliens and UFOs—just don’t call them UFOs or aliens. They’re UAPs, or Unidentified Anomalies, and NHIs, or Non-Human Intelligences. While Colter remains skeptical, his hacker Bobby (Eric Graise) is a firm believer in UAPs and other government conspiracy theories. (The people Bobby cites—Dr. Jacques F. Vallee, Josef Allen Hynek, David Grusch, Luis “Lue” Elizondo, and the Kumburgaz video—are all real people, by the way.) Colter and Bobby track down the location where we, the audience, last saw Scott. But then their phone call cuts out. Colter’s electronics start to fail just like Scott’s, followed by the same bright light.
Hours after Colter checks in, the group starts to scramble. Reenie calls someone who can hear, aka Russell Shaw. Meanwhile, Colter wakes up in a sterile, austere room with his arms bound. He’s been shot with a tranquilizer and taken to some sort of base. An unnamed government agent (Matt Passmore) asks Colter about Scott. The tracker sees through the real purpose of the interrogation. They also don’t know where Scott is. But once the agent leaves Colter alone, he easily escapes his bonds. So easily, in fact, that Colter realizes it a few scenes later. He’s momentarily distracted by the arrival of his brother, who frees him. Colter is slightly distracted by Russell and Reenie’s “phone buddy” status and the fact that he’s also talking to Velma. He doesn’t do a good job of hiding his jealousy.
As the Shaw brothers head back out on the road, Colter finally realizes that escaping such a secure location on his cell phone shouldn’t have gone so smoothly. He remembers that the dark web is also looking for Scott and concludes that government agents let them go to use Colter’s tracking skills. Of course! Russell smashes Colter’s phone. He also finds and cuts off a tracking device they had attached to his brother’s neck. (A tracking device in a tracking device? What were they going to think of next?) They return to the professor’s house and confirm that Scott helped her gather research information on UAPs to protect her reputation. They detect a signal that could be alien contact or something else. Colter and Blair realize that they are coordinates and may reveal where Scott went after he lost contact with his phone. The brothers set out to find Scott once and for all. But as they leave, the agents come to see Dr. Blair!
They say never follow a hippie to a second location, but following a conspiracy theorist to a second location works at the end of Tracker. At the second black site, activity is in full swing. There’s a countdown to “rise” running over the intercom. Trailers are filled with specimens and equipment. Making the skeptical Colter upset, thinking it’s a UAP landing site. All the while facing off against an unnamed government agent. Colter eventually finds Scott hiding in a lab. There’s just one problem: he doesn’t want to go! He thinks
