‘Tracker’ Is Officially a Different Show Following Its Most Brutal Case

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Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw standing outside and looking off to the left in Season 3 of Tracker

Published Mar 14, 2026, 6:52 PM EDT

Jenni grew up in South Jersey and developed a love for reality television at a young age when she first watched "The Osbournes." Often describing reality television as a "docuseries," Jenni loves exploring both the entertainment the shows provide and the deeper impact they have on America's cultural footprint.

Tracker started out as a feel-good detective-esque show, but three seasons later, the show is falling more in line with Law and Order: SVU, bringing a darker tone to the show. And while some fans of the original series might get turned off by the more sinister nature of the cases that Colter Shaw solves, the shift is likely a winning format for Paramount.

'Tracker's Newest Episode, "To the Bone," Seems Right Out of 'Law & Order: SVU'

In the newest episode of Tracker, which aired on Sunday, Shaw is hired by parents who want him to find their 18-year-old son, Ben. The parents own a restaurant and the last viewers see of the son is a coworker asking him to hang out with her. When he declines, she asks Ben if he needs help closing up, and he tells her that he’s almost done and she can leave.

He offers to drive her to her car, but she tells him she’s fine with walking because she has pepper spray, implying to the viewers that the neighborhood they’re in might not be the safest. The parents also tell Shaw that Ben never deposited the cash from the restaurant the night he went missing, estimated to be about $12,000. So, when the son went missing, it was easy to initially assume it had to do with a safety issue or even a robbery gone wrong.

But, viewers later learn that he was helping a friend run a fake ID business and had made new passports for two women. Shaw tracks the son’s movements to a house and in the basement, he finds rooms with women’s names on the doors and a cam room for recording sexual acts. It doesn’t take long for Shaw – or viewers – to realize that Shaw has uncovered a trafficking – presumably sex trafficking – operation.

The dark nature of the episode was a stark departure from the first season, when Shaw was tasked with finding feel-good cases. Along with the people who went missing while storm chasing, in season one, Shaw found a witness to a case that exonerated a person’s dad, a missing racehorse, and an MMA fighter trying to solve her family’s visa issues. None of the episodes were particularly happy, given that they all involved missing person cases, but none went as far as sex trafficking.

Sex trafficking, a person who is breaking the law but doing it for the right reasons and a victim who gets help to turn their life around could be a plot for an episode of Law & Order: SVU. If the shows were on the same network, it could have played as a crossover episode between the two franchises. This latest episode of Tracker felt like a case better served for Olivia Benson than Colter Shaw.

Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw on the case in the 'Tracker' episode

Justin Hartley wears a blue jacket and a white tee shirt in a 'Tracker' image

Tracker has a recurring theme to it – that Shaw is always successful in his job. It’s been that way since the very beginning of the show, and it doesn’t seem like there are any plans to change that anytime soon. The endings have become a little predictable, which maybe is why the show decided they needed to spice up the drama that happens before Shaw emerges victorious.

However, this latest season did see Shaw do something he’s never done before, and that’s almost fail. In "First Fire," episode 3 of the current season, Shaw is hired to find an arsonist, Heston Koontz, who disappears from a psychiatric facility. At first, viewers are led to believe that the parents want him to find Koontz because he may have murdered a nurse at the facility.

But, the parents tell Shaw that they need him to find their son because they know what he’s capable of doing (he did burn a family alive, after all) and that they believe he could go after a girl named Emily he was obsessed with. Shaw discovers that Koontz and Emily were both abducted by religious fanatics that want to rid the world of people they believe are obsessed by demons. Ultimately, Shaw finds both Koontz and Emily, but Koontz has been killed.

He doesn’t take the reward money from Koontz's parents because he doesn’t feel it was right since he didn’t find Koontz alive. Instead, he tells the parents to give it to Emily to help her start a new life and heal from everything that’s happened to her. So, while he didn’t fail, he also didn’t deem it a success either.

'Tracker's Darker Tone Is Attracting New Viewers

Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw on the case with a flashlight and a gun in the 'Tracker' episode "To the Bone"

Tracker is Paramount’s top show currently, regularly ranking number one week over week. And while it may sound odd to change the tone of a show that’s doing well, audiences love it. Tracker has always been a winner for Paramount, but viewership has consistently increased as the show has gotten darker. Viewership went from 8.3 million during the season 2 premiere to 12.97 million viewers for the season 3 premiere.

The darkening of the show also falls in line with Paramount’s other successful shows, so it’s not a surprise the showrunners have taken it in that direction. Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, and Yellowjackets have been top shows for the network, and all of them lean heavily into drama. Not to mention that CSI was a top show for Paramount during its run from 2000-2015 and remains a top performer on its streaming service, Paramount+.

With the success of CSI, it’s no surprise showrunners might want to take Tracker into a more serious direction. It could be a winning formula for not only the network ratings, but also for the streaming service. Paramount also decided to keep the show ending on a positive note, with Shaw always coming out on top and successfully finding every person.

So, for viewers who like the shift in the tone of the show – and there are many, ratings show – the new, darker, more ominous version of Shaw’s world is keeping them around week to week. But, those who preferred the slightly more light-hearted version of the show we saw in the first season may be disappointed with the direction Tracker is going and are unlikely to see a return to season one plot lines anytime soon.