Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for the Tracker Season 2 finale.
Does the Season 2 finale of Tracker answer enough questions, or do the reveals about Colter Shaw’s (Justin Hartley) father not satisfy? Colter’s homecoming in Season 2, Episode 20, “Echo Ridge,” isn’t just to catch up with his mother over pancakes. The prodigal son returns to find a missing family friend and uncovers a sickening criminal operation in his hometown. And while it raises an even bigger mystery, Colter (and the audience) finally learn who pushed his father to his death.
Colter Takes a Case in His Hometown on ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 20

The finale episode opens ominously with a man named Bill Weaver (Brian Keane) driving to a remote location in the middle of the woods. “Cut the crap,” he shouts, when he gets out of his car, to nobody in particular. “I just wanna see that he’s OK.” Then, all of a sudden, there’s smoke. A man in the shadows calls him “Billy boy” and tells him he’s made a mistake. He tosses a silver coin on the ground, and the scene goes dark. It sets the tone for the episode to come.
As the title suggests, this is taking place in Echo Ridge, California–the town where the Shaw family used to live together. Colter comes home to investigate because Bill’s sister Angela (Bonita Friedericy) knows his mom, Mary Dove Shaw (Wendy Crewson), and got his information. He meets with Angela at her and Bill’s family-owned diner. She tells him that Bill had become obsessed with finding an eleven-year-old boy who showed up at the restaurant with a scary older man who, by the way they were acting, was trouble. A flashback reveals that Bill gave the kid a slice of pie and a silver dollar (the coin we saw in the opening scene) and tried to let him know that it was okay to ask for help. When the man returned, Bill probed the two of them for information about their relationship. But they got up and left. Angela says that after that, Bill started searching on the internet and learned that the kid was kidnapped outside of San Francisco.
Team Tech, a.k.a. Randy (Chris Lee) and Bobby (Eric Graise), track Bill’s phone signal to a location with spotty cell service. But this is where he grew up, so Colter heads out there alone. He finds some lumberjack types poaching wood. They’re not too happy to see a guy asking questions around their low-key illegal operation. Their leader, Joe (Drew Powell), pulls a gun on Colter… but he’s just kidding! He happens to be an old friend and serves as Colter’s temporary field partner for this investigation.
A man on Joe’s crew named Pedro (Diego Stredel) gives Colter a little more insight into the situation. He also works at the diner (or used to) and thinks Bill got in too far over his head. Pedro heard that Bill saw the alleged kidnapper he was looking for around a guy named Ronnie Yates (Artine Tony Browne), who scares even these tough lumberjack pirate types. Ronnie is rumored to be involved with the Aryan Brotherhood and runs “muscle and distribution” for meth dealers. Pedro refused to help Bill if Yates was involved, and Joe advises against trying to cross him as well. Colter does it anyway, however, and gets the name “Carl Murphy” (Shane Leydon) from Ronnie.
Colter Uncovers a Child Trafficking Ring in the ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Finale

Meanwhile, in Colorado, Velma (Abby McEnany) brings Reenie (Fiona Rene) a blanket and a message: Sharf (Pej Vahdat) wants to talk to her. She’s not quite ready to deal with that client, however, and focuses on the case at hand instead. Colter wants Reenie to pull up Carl Murphy’s file, and it’s not great. He’s a registered sex offender working with a private trucking company, so he wouldn’t have to disclose his status. Velma then researches the addresses associated with him and finds out that his late father lived just outside of Echo Ridge.
When Colter gets to the Murphy house, he finds Polaroid pictures of over a dozen missing kids. Bobby and Randy run facial recognition on the images and discover that these kids are from all over the country. This is not a solo operation. Some have been reported missing. Others are assumed runaways. None of them had Colter Shaw on the case… until now, of course. Colter also finds Bill’s dead body in a car outside. That’s enough to involve the local sheriff and the FBI immediately.
Bobby finds where Murphy is, thanks to a phone number on a receipt, and advises him not to go there alone. Colter enlists his buddy Joe to help “catch a pedo” (Joe’s words). Sure enough, there are multiple kids there that Carl Murphy and a few other guys were holding. They planned to move them to Texas next. (There’s a spine-chilling moment where Carl tells one of the kids to stop crying and save his tears for his “new daddy,” because maybe he’ll like it. Yikes!) Colter and Joe take down Carl while the FBI busts the joints and gathers all the kids. This is a major crisis averted and, as far as Colter’s penchant for finding missing people goes, a jackpot.
Colter Finds More Clues About His Father on ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 20

Image via CBS

Don’t worry. We didn’t go back to Echo Ridge and learn nothing about Colter’s father. At the beginning of the episode, Colter checks in with Randy about the phone number he found hidden in his dad’s box of stuff. It belonged to a scientist named David Pearson, who apparently died by suicide the same year as Colter’s dad. Randy learned that he relocated from rural Virginia to California and thinks there’s a red flag indicating covert government work. (Because wherever he was in Virginia was near Langley where the CIA is headquartered? Randy’s logic is a little shaky, though it’s not a bad theory.) Even more suspicious is that there’s no public record of David Pearson’s academic work.
Put a pin in that until Season 3, however. Colter visits his mother before meeting with Angela. Their conversation is a bit terse, but he agrees to let her do his laundry and take care of him a little while he’s home. This means, that, when she’s grabbing clothes out of his van, she sees the box of Ashton Shaw’s stuff. That also means that when Colter finds one of his dad’s wood carvings in Carl Murphy’s house and he asks her about it, she gets defensive.

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At the end of the episode, in a flashback that almost serves as a “deleted scene” revealing more about the confrontation between Colter and Carl, we find out that he threatened to cut Carl’s fingers off if he didn’t tell him how he got the carving. He says it belonged to his uncle. Colter says, “Gimme a name,” and then goes to visit said uncle the next day. When the guy (Shane Leydon) answers the door, Colter asks if he’s “Carl Murphy’s uncle”… so he didn’t remember the name. To be fair, the audience didn’t learn it either. “How about you gimme a name,” the uncle then asks. “Colter Shaw,” says Colter Shaw.
The mysterious man will probably remember that name, though, because he knew Ashton Shaw. They became friends when Colter was a kid, after the patriarch gave him a hard time running power lines for the county on his property. He installed the generator and helped keep the county off of his back so that they could live a little more off the grid. In the present, just when the conversation seems to be going in a nice direction, Colter pulls a gun on him. Was he the man that Russell (Jensen Ackles) saw in the woods the night their father died? Did he kill him?
Yes, Carl Murphy’s uncle admits. He’s the one who pushed Colter’s dad off a cliff. But he had a reason. He was doing a favor for–drumroll please–Colter’s mother, Mary! She asked him for his help. It was the mom all along! So, while we didn’t learn anything about the phone number or why a covert federal information knew things about Ashton Shaw, this is still a pretty good bombshell to cap off Tracker Season 2 and get us thinking about the potential for Season 3.

Tracker

Colter Shaw finally learns who played a role in his father’s death in the Tracker Season 2 finale.

Release Date

February 11, 2024

Network

CBS

Showrunner

Elwood Reid

Writers

Ben H. Winters, Hilary Weisman Graham

Justin Hartley

Colter Shaw

Pros & Cons

The nonlinear storytelling is fresh, stylistically mature, and keeps things from feeling formulaic.
Colter’s complicated relationship with his mom ups the stakes when it almost gets in the way of the investigation.
Joe is welcome to come be Colter’s BFF at any time, especially if it means Drew Powell’s ‘The Pitt’ character doesn’t return to that series!
I enjoy how Mary and Joe think the world has gotten worse, but Colter thinks the darkness that has always been around is just revealing itself.

At the rate this show raises questions and slowly drops crumbs of answers, I worry some mysteries won’t ever be solved.
A child trafficking ring is a HUGE deal and the episode kind of glosses over it.