Tracker season 4 lands an October release date: what to expect as Justin Hartley picks up the DARPA trail
Mark it down: Colter Shaw is back on the road Sunday, October 4, at 9:30 p.m. ET on CBS, sliding in right after the Marshals premiere, with next-day streaming on Paramount+.
And this time the rewardist has bigger problems than lost hikers, because season 3 went ahead and detonated the entire Shaw family lore.
A quick refresher on the DARPA of it all
Last season, the show's slow-burn dad mystery finally cracked open: Ashton Shaw had stumbled onto Chrono Stasis, a DARPA-funded covert program experimenting on gifted children. He tried to burn it down and got discredited, targeted, and driven to the brink for his trouble — which reframes roughly everything about Colter's feral childhood.
Then brother Russell (Jensen Ackles) took a shady deal to protect them both, torched a file about something Ashton did to little Colter, and vanished. The finale's parting gifts: Ashton's mysteriously damaged truck, and the strong suggestion that Colter's memory has a locked room in it.
What's actually coming in season 4
Justin Hartley has been mercifully chatty about the plan. On Russell's return:
"We left him in a place where he was doing something for Colter — keeping a secret from him, but for Colter's own good. He took one for the team."
The brothers reunite on Russell's terms, per Hartley: "When we find him this season… he needs a favor from Colter and from his skill set. So the two brothers work together to solve this problem that Russell's found himself in — and one of his friends, too."
Beyond the Ackles of it:
- The truck. That front-end damage is a Chekhov's fender if I've ever seen one
- A home base. Colter apparently owns an actual house, a twist more shocking than any government conspiracy
- A new backdrop, with production moving from Vancouver to Los Angeles
- Fewer familiar faces — Abby McEnany and Eric Graise have exited, while Fiona Rene's Reenie stays put, secrets and all
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October 4. Bring your conspiracy corkboard.
Previously we wrote: Wonka's The Golden Ticket controversy explained: Netflix revived Gene Wilder's voice with AI
