Blink and You Miss It! The Jensen Ackles Supernatural Easter Egg We *Almost* Didn’t Catch in Tracker
If you blinked and missed Jensen Ackle’s Tracker Supernatural Easter egg, don’t worry because we have the recap on how he honored one of his most memorable characters. Tracker is CBS’ new drama series following Colter Shaw, a survivalist with extensive tracking skills who makes a living by aiding law enforcement and private citizens for reward money.
Ackles made his debut on Tracker in Season 1, Episode 12, “Off the Books,” as Russell Shaw, the estranged older brother of Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw. The episode, which aired a week before the Season 1 finale, saw Colter and Russell reunite for the first time in 20 years as Russell showed up at Colter’s home to give him new information on their father’s death decades earlier.
What fans may have missed from the episode, however, was an Easter egg to Ackles’ iconic role as Dean Winchester on The CW’s Supernatural. The Easter egg, which occurred about 10 minutes into the episode, started with Colter picking up Russell from a motel. As Russell got into the passenger seat of the car, he patted a Chevrolet Impala parked next to Colter’s track. (The Chevrolet Impala was no longer in the parking lot when Colter visited the motel again later in the episode when he realized Russell was gone.)
As Supernatural fans know, the Chevrolet Impala — which was referred to as “Baby” by Dean on the show — was passed down to him from his father, John Winchester. The car was also seen in hundreds of scenes — from chase sequences to car crashes to cross country tips — as Dean and his brother, Sam Winchester, hunted monsters throughout Supernatural‘s 15 seasons and 327 episodes.
The car was so beloved to Ackles that he took it with him when Supernatural ended in 2020. “As far as taking something on the final day, I will definitely be taking something that I’ve had my eye on since day one of Supernatural,” he told Digital Spy at the time. “But it’s OK, I’m not stealing it. I got permission. I begged and begged and pleaded for years, but I finally got it this year. They’re going to let me drive home the Impala.”
Ackles also revealed on Michael Rosenbaun’s “Inside of You” podcast at the time that he had a clause about the Chevrolet Impala in his contract. . “I’ve been talking about that for two years now, and they finally added that to my contract this last season,” he said.
Russell isn’t Colter’s only sibling to appear in Season 1 of Tracker. Melissa Roxburgh — who played Michaela “Mick” Stone on Manifest — appeared in Season 1, Episode 11, “Beyond the Campus Walls” as Dory Shaw, Colter and Russell’s younger sister who now works as a professor. Hartley confirmed to Collider in May 2024 that Ackles, Roxburgh and his wife, Sofia Pernas, who played Colter’s rival Billie Matalon, are all set to return in Season 2.
“[Sofia] is coming back. Jensen [Ackles] is gonna come back. Melissa [Roxburgh] is gonna come back. There’s another leak for you. They’re all coming back,” he said.
He also told the site about how Ackles was cast as Colter’s brother. “And then, when it was time to cast Russell Shaw, I was like, ‘We built this whole thing up. It’s important that we get somebody in there that is just a juggernaut. Somebody that you would believe because he’s gonna go toe-to-toe with Colter, in a good or bad way, and that you also believe is his brother,” he said. “And I just thought Jensen Ackles would be perfect for it.”
He also teased Colter and Russell’s future dynamics. “Colter’s brother killed his father, so that adds a different dynamic. The relationship with Dory is strained for other reasons. It’s not like he suspects her of doing anything wrong like that, but it’s strained for different reasons,” he said.
