How ‘Tracker’ Fired a Major Cast Member in Season 2 Premiere
Justin Hartley’s CBS drama Tracker was tasked with firing a major cast member after a cast member unexpectedly left — but how did the show make the change onscreen?
In the season 2 premiere, which aired on Sunday, Oct. 13, Velma (Abby McEnany) mentioned the distance between her and her wife, Teddi (Robin Weigert), which is why she’s spending more time helping Reenie (Fiona Rene).
“[Teddi]’s going to be there for a while. She’s helping her mom get things together. I was in the way and it wasn’t really good,” Velma admitted. “So I’m back. Don’t worry, I’m still busy.”
It was confirmed in August that Weigert would not be returning as a regular cast member of the series after appearing on the show throughout the first season. Weigert primarily shared the screen with McEnany as they helped Hartley’s character Colter solve multiple missing persons cases across the country to collect the reward money.
Hartley teased how the storyline would develop in the second season, telling TV Insider in September, “At the end of last season, Reenie decides to leave the agency and go into business for herself. She has a big change in her life and in a way, she teams up with Velma and you’ll see a lot of the two of them working together, which is a really interesting dynamic.”
The plot twist means Velma will be moving into a new job while her wife is away. “[Reenie and Velma] both have a common goal with some completely different ways of doing their jobs,” the actor continued. “Bobby [Eric Graise], our computer genius, is working hard. Then we have a couple of really fun surprises for Reenie.”
Hartley also explained how Jensen Ackles and Melissa Roxburgh will return to play Colter’s siblings despite their busy schedules. (After both were introduced in the first season, Ackles, 46, is booked on the upcoming Prime Video horror series Countdown while Roxburgh, 31, will lead NBC’s midseason drama The Hunting Party.) “[Melissa’s] show wrapped [production] before we wrapped so we could have her back for the final episodes of the show,” the actor noted. “And then Jennifer Morrison will be back to direct episode six. I’m sure her character will be back.”
Based on the novel The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver, Tracker premiered in February after Super Bowl LVIII and immediately found an audience as people tuned in weekly to watch their favorite fictional survivor. After the show’s first season ended, viewership numbers confirmed that Tracker was the most-watched series of the 2023-24 television season. The show has been renewed for a second season, introducing new cases for Colter to solve.
“We have another whole season to shoot that we have to do better than Season 1. So while we wanted all of those storylines to have closure, we also wanted those closures to lead to other questions—bigger, deeper questions—about his past,” Hartley told Deadline in May about future plans for the show. “So I think we did that in answering some of the questions that we’ve been building up to all 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.”
