‘Tracker’ EPs Answer Whether They’ll Replace Jensen Ackles and Melissa Roxburgh for Season 2
Tracker fans finally have an answer as to whether Jensen Ackles and Melissa Roxburgh will be replaced ahead of season 2. During the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Saturday, July 14, Justin Hartley confirmed that Ackles, 46, will return as Colter’s brother Russell, saying, “We’ve got him. He’s coming back. We’re having a lot of fun with it. It’s a great story.”
Meanwhile, executive producer Elwood Reid teased that Ackles has been locked in for a few episodes. TVLine then asked Reid about Roxburgh’s status on the show after she played Colter and Russell’s sister, Dory, in season 1, adding, “We’ll be revealing some more information about his sister.”
The clarification comes after fans were concerned that Ackles and Roxburgh’s roles would have to be replaced. After both were introduced in the first season, Ackles has been booked on the upcoming Prime Video thriller Countdown while Roxburgh, 31, will headline NBC’s midseason drama The Hunting Party.
Tracker, which premiered in February, follows Colter, a survivor, as he travels the country helping solve missing persons cases, tracking down information on criminal cases, and more. The season 1 finale introduced Colter’s childhood friend Lizzy (Jennifer Morrison), who revealed some surprising secrets about his past.
Colter learns more about his father’s mysterious murder after Lizzie reveals that her mother had an affair with Colter’s father. Their parents had been fighting before Colter’s father died, and Lizzie later found a box her mother had hidden filled with Colter’s father’s work, which she gave to Dory but never mentioned to Colter.
Hartley, 47, has weighed in on where the story goes from here, telling Deadline in May, “We have another season to shoot and we have to do better than Season 1. So while we want all those storylines to be wrapped up, we also want those endings to lead to other questions—bigger, deeper questions—about his past.” 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 lead to a bigger mystery that we can address in season 2.”
“Does Colter think he pushed him off the cliff? Probably not,” he added. “But does he think he had nothing to do with anything or didn’t know anything about his father’s death? And that he was completely clueless like Colter? I don’t think so.”
More recently, Hartley spoke to Us Weekly about potential plans to bring more of his This Is Us co-stars to Tracker.
“If I had my way, I would have them all on at the same time, but that’s a different show,” he said on Saturday. “I mean, imagine a life where you get to do exactly what you want to do. They call it work. I love what I do. And working with people that you absolutely love and are incredibly talented. That’s how I feel about all of them. So, at any given moment, I’d love to give them all a shot. Totally.”
