Why Did the Ending of That ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode Feel So… Weird?

The action drama Tracker seems to be taking an increasingly dark turn, leaving fans wondering how things will play out as the show continues. Now in Season 2, and already renewed for Season 3, the series follows Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley), a skilled survivalist, as he works missing person cases for reward money with the help of his team.

Season 2, Episode 16, entitled “The Mercy Seat,” dives into creepy territory as Colter joins an old friend to search for two women who went missing in the wilderness. What he uncovers is shocking and violent. But the episode also ends on a strange note, leaving fans with more questions than answers and an incomplete feeling.

What Happens in ‘Tracker’ Season 2, Episode 16

In Tracker Season 2, Episode 16, “The Mercy Seat,” Colter trudges through the snowy wilderness of Montana in search of two young women who went snowboarding and never returned. He is joined by a search and rescue worker named Roger, played by The Blacklist‘s Diego Klattenhoff.

As they split up to follow two sets of tracks, Colter finds one of the women named Shelly (Lexi Simonsen), who is suffering from hypothermia and disoriented from a serious head injury. Meanwhile, Roger finds the other sister, Brianna (Madison Lawlor), who went off to get help and lost her sister. With no working SAT phone and no option to travel with the women until Shelly feels better, Colter finds a spot for them to set up camp until they can find a way to call for help.

While looking for firewood, Colter comes across a remote cabin and sees a woman dancing outside. Amelia (Ariana Guerra) calls out to her brothers Dash (Sean Depner) and Rufus (Jedidiah Goodacre), and they are cordial. They relent to Colter bringing the girls back, offering them food and a chance to stay warm until it’s safe to leave. Colter, however, is worried about Roger, who went to find cell service and hasn’t yet returned.

He sets out to search for Roger and finds him injured. Then, someone begins shooting at them. The girls and their three new friends are gone when they return to the cabin. As he investigates, Colter realizes something is wrong. He discovers the wires in the snowmobile were cut — the same snowmobile the brothers claimed wasn’t working. When he goes out back to the tool shed, he finds a dead elderly couple and realizes this was their cabin, and those people were not, in fact, off-the-grid digital detoxers, as they claimed.

As he investigates, Colter comes upon a nearby lodge where he finds Amelia. She acts strangely, submitting to him as though she believes he will hurt her. He figures out that she was kidnapped as well and has been enslaved by the men and their leader, Father Eamon (Sean Bridgers), for years. He promises he will help her, but he needs her to distract them for a bit. She’s unsure whether to trust him, but Colter is Colter, and his smoldering gaze proves he’s one of the good guys.

In the lodge, it’s revealed that Father Eamon is a vicious psychopath who kidnaps, tortures, and murders people. His two male followers bend to his will, completely brainwashed by him and this little cult that he has built. The two young women are terrified, especially when Father Eamon brings out the Mercy Seat. Brianna is forced to sit inside this oversized chair as Father Eamon viciously chokes her with his scarf, maniacally laughing as he watches her gasp for air.

Ariana arrives in the nick of time to serve coffee, but Father Eamon suspects something is up. She’s acting strange. By the time Colter arrives, sneaking around the corner of the lodge with a gun, Ariana is hanging from the ceiling with the scarf, struggling to breathe as her feet dangle above the floor. Colter makes eye contact with Brianna, who notices him, and she signals with the direction of her eyes where the two other men are in the room. Colter approaches, and a shoot-out begins. He manages to take down all three men and release Ariana in the nick of time before she perishes. Everything is going to be okay.

The Ending of ‘Tracker’ Season 2, Episode 16 Is Abrupt

From there, Colter walks outside with the three women clutching him as their savior. He had already contacted Randy (Chris Lee) and Bobby (Eric Graise), who is finally back, via an SOS message from a ham radio handle using an APR system at the lodge. Randy traced the signal to a location not far from where Colter went, but emergency services wouldn’t send a chopper until they had more information. Randy calls Reenie (Fiona Rene) for help.

Reenie is meeting with a wealthy client, Leo Scarf (Pej Vahdat), who has just indicated that he feels he hasn’t paid her enough for her fantastic services. She has an idea: he has a helicopter and asks him to use it. Paramedics arrive via Leo’s helicopter to take the ladies back to safety. Colter tells one of them that a rescue worker is injured in a nearby cabin and also needs assistance.

But then, the episode ends. Colter doesn’t go with them in the helicopter but stays with Ariana. He looks at her and tells her it’s time to go home. How did he get back, and where did he go from there? Did he hop back on the snowmobile to the cabin to meet Roger and the paramedics? Did he wait for the police to arrive at the gruesome scene that includes three dead serial killers and give his report?

However, there’s no resolution with the ladies he saved. Who is Amelia? It’s obvious she’s one of a string of women who have been abducted by this crew. Earlier in the episode, Randy tells Reenie that he looked into the spot Colter went to, and it’s known for many disappearances, including a photographer who went missing there a year ago. But Amelia isn’t that photographer — she doesn’t match the photo and mentioned having been held in a cage for eight or nine years. Fans get no backstory or sweet reunion with her loved ones. There are no details about Shelly and Brianna, who had been looking into these strange disappearances. It’s a missed opportunity to link these stories and provide interesting context.

There’s no exchange of gratitude nor handing over of a check for services, which tends to be the customary ending of every episode or at least part of it. Moreover, viewers don’t learn anything about Father Eamon, who he is, who the two young men are to him, and how he came to be doing what he was doing. How long were they in the wilderness? Were they responsible for all the disappearances? How did no one find them in a massive remote lodge?

So Many Questions Remain in ‘Tracker’

The episode presents other storylines that never get a clear resolution, too. Did Brianna really see a man with antlers in the wilderness after they got lost and injured? Or was she hallucinating? It’s implied this was likely Dash or Rufus since Colter finds tables full of deer antlers in the lodge. What’s the symbolism of this, not to mention the Mercy Seat?

Also, who was shooting at Colter and Roger? Colter mentioned at the time that he didn’t think Dash and Rufus could have followed him so quickly to be the shooters, but it’s possible they used the other snowmobile they claimed was broken and then cut the wire after returning. But wouldn’t Colter have heard them so close behind him? And if they followed to shoot, how did they manage to do this and get Amelia and the two kidnapped girls over to the lodge and secure there in such a short amount of time? Reddit threads have blown up over the episode’s lack of closure, with many saying it felt like it was missing a final scene. MaddysinLeigh says the ending was “way too fast” and “I want to know some details on what those dudes were doing.”

Redblackrider has questions as well and points out inconsistencies. “I get they were some kind of tiny cult, but you can’t just mention ‘mercy seat’ and not explain it…And why kill the old couple for their cabin when they already have an entire lodge?” They add that it felt like not knowing how to end an essay in grade school. SierraMountainMom comments that the whole episode was weird because there was “so much vagueness about so many different things.”

Overall, fans believe the episode felt more like a “to be continued” one that was poorly written. The hope with this episode and others that introduced seemingly incomplete stories, like Season 2, Episode 13, “Neptune,” is that they will be revisited in some way as part of a larger plot. But that might be wishful thinking.

The only larger plot revealed thus far is the overarching mystery of the death of Colter’s father, Ashton (Lee Tergesen), which likely involves government conspiracies and some kind of cover-up. If all these seemingly out-of-place, incomplete episodes are part of a strategy to eventually tie everything together, what the show does could be brilliant once it all comes into focus. But more than likely, the show is losing its touch with subpar writing. Hopefully, things will change as Season 2 comes to a close. Stream Tracker on Paramount+.