Tracker Season 2 Premieres With Largest Audience Since Post-Super Bowl Debut
Tracker has officially taken the title of the most-watched TV show of the fall.
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 its post-Super Bowl debut in February.
Tracker is the most-watched broadcast since the finale of NCIS with Mark Harmon in September 2021. In terms of viewership, Tracker even beat out CBS’s Matlock reboot, which drew 7.7 million viewers in its premiere last month.
Based on the novel The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver, Tracker found an audience shortly after its debut earlier this year. 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 was renewed for a second season at that time.
Tracker focuses on a survivalist named Colter (Justin Hartley), who travels across 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 current 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 really 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 show for years, through a pandemic, a strike, etc.,” he told Entertainment Tonight in February. “We poured our hearts into this show and started working on it, 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 excited to finally have a chance for people to see it.”
That same month, the actor opened up about how he makes Colter appeal to all audiences, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “I think a lot of times, it all comes down to this political message or theme. Sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle that we’re entertainers. I want people to watch something and be entertained.”
He continued, “Colter Shaw is not necessarily driven by an agenda. He is a businessman. He makes money, that’s how he makes a living. He is not driven by politics. He is driven by doing the right thing. And, where does that come from? Well, that comes from his childhood, and we will explain that in the series.
“We have another season to shoot and we have to do better than season 1. So while we wanted all those storylines to wrap up, we also wanted those bows to lead to other questions — bigger, deeper questions — about his past,” Hartley teased to Deadline in May. “So I think we did that in answering some of the questions that we’ve 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 lead to a bigger mystery, something that we can unpack in season 2.”
