Jensen Ackles Just Helped Justin Hartley’s Colter Finally Crack Tracker’s Biggest Mystery

Last night’s Tracker saw Colter investigating the disappearance of a crime scene cleaner and amateur sleuth named Margo. Margo was on the trail of a serial killer who’d been active for over two decades. At the end of the episode, Colter gets a new lead into the mystery of Ashton Shaw.

While Colter found the man who killed his father, there are still a lot of questions that remain. One of them is what spooked Ashton the summer he died. Jensen Ackles’ Russell Shaw helped Colter by using his contacts to get some information about the government scientist who died the same year as Ashton.

Tracker’s Next Big Mystery Is About Ashton Shaw’s Government Work

Image via CBS

The night he died, Ashton Shaw was convinced someone was after him. Ashton demanded his children gather their things and follow him into the torrential downpour to safety. When they refused to leave without their mother, Ashton left alone, muttering to himself that it’s only him they’re after anyway. At Colter’s insistence, Russell followed Ashton to bring him back home.

When neither Russell nor Ashton returned, Colter went looking for them. Colter found Ashton at the bottom of a cliff, dead, with Russell standing at the top. For twenty years, Colter believed that Russell was responsible for their father’s death. After reconnecting with his brother, played by The Boys‘ Jensen Ackles, Colter learned that there was someone else there that night. In Tracker‘s Season 2 finale, Colter finds the man who killed Ashton, but that’s only the beginning of unraveling his family’s secrets.

Colter’s mother, Mary, had asked a man named Otto to speak with Ashton. The conversation didn’t go well, and Otto pushed Ashton off the cliff, killing him. Colter was still reeling from the discovery in Season 3’s premiere. Russell found Colter poring over Ashton’s journals, and the two brothers had a heart-to-heart. They shared information and both agreed that Ashton had become exponentially more paranoid that fateful summer. While Aston had always been paranoid, moving his family off the grid into a cabin in the woods, he was getting worse just before his death.

Jensen Ackles’ Russell Shaw Got Colter His First New Lead in Tracker’s ‘Angel’

Image via Sergei Bachlakov/CBS

Colter believes that Ashton’s erratic behavior was related to his government work. While his parents were university professors, Ashton briefly performed top-secret work for the government. Colter has yet to speak to his mother about it, not quite ready to talk to the woman who lied to him for twenty years and kept him from his older brother.

The only thing Colter had to go on was an old phone number for a government scientist found hidden in the binding of one of Ashton’s journals. Colter had given the number to his tech guy, but Randy couldn’t uncover much. The number belonged to David Pearson, who used to work for the government and died in an apparent suicide the same year as Ashton. If Pearson is connected to Ashton, the fact that they died in the same year is highly suspicious.

In the second part of Tracker’s two-part premiere, Russell offered to help Colter look into the phone number. Russell isn’t keen on delving into his family’s past, but he knows Colter can’t let it go, so he’s supporting Colter by helping with the investigation however he can. Russell worked for the military and a private contractor, earning him some contacts who could access the more classified information to which Randy didn’t have access.

In “The Old Ways,” Russell sent over a bunch of records, many of which were redacted and not publicly available. At the end of this week’s Tracker, after Colter saved a couple of true-crime fans from a serial killer, he gets a phone call from Randy. Colter’s new handler had been sifting through the records Russell sent over, looking for any clue into Pearson’s connection to Ashton, and he found something.

Randy described the investigation into the records as “wheel inside of wheels,” but found something Colter would want to check out. It’s something about David Pearson and where Colter can begin investigating the mysterious scientist in hopes of discovering answers about what Ashton was so afraid of. With the timing of the upcoming storyline where Colter finds himself on the run, it could be connected to his investigation into his father and David Pearson.