CBS Effectively Blocks Colter's Original Team's Return In Tracker

2 hours ago 10

Published Oct 6, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020.

While Tracker might be returning to CBS for season 4 soon, the show’s original team are essentially disbanded, and this will have a knock-on effect on the tone of the series. The success of Prime Video’s Reacher has resulted in a slew of new action thriller shows based on bestselling book series. There is Prime Video’s own starry Patricia Cornwell adaptation Scarpetta, as well as the streaming service’s James Patterson series Cross, starring Aldis Hodge as the titular Alex Cross.

Inevitably, traditional network TV scrambled to replicate the appeal of Reacher too, although this was substantially harder thanks to the formal differences between the two formats. As evidenced by earlier streaming hits like Prime Video’s Bosch franchise, streaming services are great at providing viewers with character-centric thrillers with lone wolf protagonists and sharp, short seasons. In contrast, network TV tends to instead favor ensemble police procedurals with bigger casts and longer seasons.

Whether they are as dark as NYPD Blue or as silly as The Rookie, network TV’s police procedurals usually rely on a team of colleagues rather than a lone cop. This is the formula that gave viewers the NCIS, CSI, Law & Order, and FBI franchises, but CBS’s Reacher competitor Tracker took an admirable stab at mixing the two approaches. Like Reacher, Tracker focuses on a one-man army, but Justin Hartley’s survivalist Colter Shaw has a team to support his searches.

Tracker Season 4 Establishes Its Replacement For Teddi, Velma, and Bobby

Based on the Jeffrey Deaver novel The Never Game, Tracker stars Hartley as Shaw, a hardened survivalist who uses his finely honed skills as a tracker to work as a bounty hunter. Shaw takes payments from the cops and civilians alike to track down people who have gone missing, whether they are innocent victims, villains who don’t want to be found, or anything in between these two extremes.

However, while Reacher typically works alone save for his rotating cast of ever-changing temporary sidekicks and his reliable former colleague Neagley, Shaw has a team that can rival Law & Order: SVU’s lineup. In Tracker season 1 alone, viewers meet his handlers Velma and Teddy, his lawyer Reenie, and his trusty tech expert Bobby Exley. Despite ostensibly acting as a lone wolf, clearly, Shaw has a support system.

This lineup moves and changes throughout seasons 2 and 3, with Mel Day joining Reenie’s work and Bobby’s cousin Randy coming to replace Bobby over time. On the surface, this might not seem like such a big deal, since Shaw still has a support network. However, a closer look proves that this makes Shaw’s entire original Tracker team redundant, forcing the show to start building up chemistry and rapport between its field team all over again.

One glance at NCIS: LA’s upcoming spinoff NCIS: NY proves that plenty of viewers come to police procedurals not just for the case of the week mysteries, but for the camaraderie and shifting relationship dynamics between the show’s ensemble cast. As such, although showrunner Elwood Reid reassured TVLine that both Velma and Bobby’s departures in Tracker season 4 would get satisfying in-universe explanations and justifications, this doesn’t ameliorate their impact on the show as a whole.

Bobby’s cousin Randy is currently a fan-favorite, so it makes sense that, as Bobby leaves, Randy is being promoted to a series regular role. Meanwhile, Velma leaving to return to her estranged wife Teddie also adds up, and Mel can theoretically take over some of the character’s day-to-day legal work with Reenie and collaboration with Shaw. With Mel becoming a series regular, this seems to be the show’s plan, but these changes highlight the reality that Tracker still hasn’t set up its core team after three seasons and 56 episodes.

Why Colter's Original Team Will Always Be Tracker's Biggest Missed Opportunity

If shows like CBS’s Yellowstone spinoff Marshals prove anything, it is that network police procedurals are getting more comfortable focusing their stories on one character rather than a large ensemble cast. However, Tracker clearly opted to give Shaw a team he could work with early on in the show’s run, and it is this specific twist on the formula that makes the series stand out in comparison to the darker, grittier Reacher.

As such, the fact that the show now can’t flesh out Velma and Bobby, and instead needs to start over with two new main characters, can’t help but feel like a wasted opportunity. Tracker season 4 had the potential to make Shaw’s team closer than ever and, if Velma and Bobby had stayed for the show’s latest outing, the series could have expanded on their existing roles.

Now, Tracker instead needs to start over anew, with a new tech expert in Randy and a new handler for Shaw in the form of Mel. Both Mel and Randy have been a welcome addition in earlier seasons, but cycling through new supporting characters and dropping existing characters in the process only serves to keep viewers at a remove from the show’s heroes.

The entire point of Tracker’s team is to make the series feel more like a show from the NCIS franchise or the Law & Order universe than Bosch or Reacher. Thus, dropping Shaw’s original team is Tracker’s worst missed opportunity, since it means that the show has turned its hero into more of a lone wolf than ever before.

Can Colter's Original Team Members Ever Return? (How?)

Justin Hartley in Tracker season 3 as Colter Shaw

Ideally, a police procedural should be able to survive the departure of its main character. Historically, huge network cop shows like NCIS and Law & Order: SVU have needed to weather this proverbial storm with the exits of actors like Mark Harmon and Christopher Meloni. Criminal Minds even managed to do this twice when two different lead actors, Mandy Patinkin and Thomas Gibson, both left the show suddenly.

In contrast, Tracker is more reliant than ever before on Hartley’s Colter Shaw, as the rest of season 4’s characters are relative newcomers who viewers barely know. Fortunately, Reid did tell TVLine that Bobby and Velma’s shared season 4 exit “doesn't mean these people can't come back,” especially since the show runner carefully noted that "we didn't 'replace' Velma or Bobby.”

That said, it is tough to imagine how the series would justify this without their return feeling like a failure on their part. Leaving Shaw’s team seems like the best choice for both Bobby and Velma in Tracker season 4, so the CBS show is now in the tricky position of both credibly justifying their exits while, simultaneously, keeping the door open for their potential comebacks.

Source: TVLine