‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: Missing Hikers Lead Colter Shaw to Multiple Mysteries
Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) goes looking for some friends from college this week on Tracker and ends up finding a new father figure. In Season 2 Episode 6, “Trust Fall,” directed by past and future Tracker guest star Jennifer Morrison, the past, present, and future combine in a camping trip gone horribly wrong. The episode opens on a seemingly innocent drunken campsite in Washington State’s Snoqualmie National Forest. Monica (Holly Curran) and Jason (Jean-Luc Bilodeau) tease their friend Sam (Dejon Loyola) about being a lightweight. They dance to The Cranberries’ “Time Is Ticking Out” and reminisce about old times. Even when Monica suggests to Cooper (Andres Velez) that they take a moonlit hike to a waterfall to sober up, it doesn’t seem all that nefarious. Cooper is a little morose and hesitant, but maybe because he’s grown out of partying.
However, the next morning, all four of them are missing and the newest addition to the gang, Lauren (Ashley Wong), hires Colter to find out what happened. Lauren missed the first night of the camping trip for a business dinner and arrived to find her friends’ tents abandoned and bloody. Everyone but Sam left their phones behind too, which is definitely a red flag. In a rare moment of judgment, Colter remarks that drunk hiking is “not the greatest life choice” – ok, Mr. Goody Two Shoes!
Bobby (Eric Graise) looks up the alleged lightweight and finds that Sam’s got a criminal record for drunk and disorderly behavior. Could he have done something to the other three? It’s looking that way, so Lauren calls the cops. But then Colter finds Sam injured not far from there. He claims that he missed the hike because he fell down a hill and passed out. He also says that he heard gunshots, and Colter determines that they came from a shotgun. Our rewardist hero believes Sam’s story. It must be nice to have Colter’s judgment of character and confidence. Only a few minutes ago he was asking Lauren if Sam, a man she only recently became friends with, could be dangerous and violent. Then he not only left her alone with him but asked her to take him to the hospital in her car. Thankfully, Sam’s not a threat in this situation and didn’t attack Lauren, but what if?! The moral of this story is clearly that this friend group does not deserve someone as good as Lauren.
An Obsessed Cop Becomes Colter’s Mentor In ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 6
Deeper in the woods, Colter encounters a retired Tacoma police officer named Keaton (Brent Sexton). The two of them size each other up. Colter knows he’s not the gunman he’s looking for, which impresses Keaton. The old man is another kind of tracker–or so he says. He tracks the moon cycles, and last night was a Super Blue Moon. As he explains to Colter, there’s a reason this particular moon brought him to the area. Back in the day, Keaton was never able to catch a potential serial killer in the area who did his killing during the rare astrological event.
The two of them team up to find out who’s been firing a shotgun in the woods. They bond over cold cases that haunt them years later. Colter mentions the disappearance of Gina Pickett, whose anniversary he “celebrated” with the girl’s sister in the Tracker Season 2 premiere. At the end of the episode, Keaton offers to put fresh eyes on this mystery. Colter doesn’t mention the man with the bag of dirt he harassed back in Episode 1, but does say that Gina worked at Hot Topic and that the sisters lived near the Ozarks. Looks like this won’t be the last we see of Keaton on Tracker.
But before that, Colter helps Keaton track down the man with the shotgun. It’s another red herring. Colter manages to not get shot simply by saying, “Nope, don’t point that thing at me” – impressive! He turns out to be a mentally ill genius named Marcus Wilson (Haig Sutherland) who lives off the grid with the delusion that the woods belong to him. Intriguing, but ultimately not relevant to the location of the campers. Marcus admits that he decided against killing the intruders because, in his words, the hikers were pretty determined to kill each other. He fired his shotgun for the hell of it. Pointing at a picture Colter has of the campers, Marcus informs him that Monica and Jason held Cooper at knifepoint before running off together.
Friend on Friend Violence Escalates In ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 6
While Colter is tracking the shooter and bonding with his new buddy Keaton, Sam learns at the hospital that he’d been drugged with Monica’s anxiety medication. He clearly wasn’t “supposed” to be on the hike to the waterfall. Meanwhile, Bobby, who has been looking into this chaotic and increasingly dangerous group of friends, discovers that Cooper has been making regular, anonymous payments to a woman named Natalie in Seattle. Colter asks Reenie (Fiona Rene), who’s in the area meeting with a prospective new client, to talk to Natalie. She finds out that the woman’s husband was killed eight years ago in a suspected hit-and-run. They never found the body, and some calls to a tip line indicate that there were drunk college kids driving recklessly in the area that night. Curiouser and curiouser!
The pieces are starting to fall into place, and we switch POVs to follow the antagonists for a bit. Monica and Jason force Cooper to drive away from the campsite. As it turns out, the three friends were responsible for killing Natalie’s husband and hiding his body eight years ago. The guilt was too much for Cooper, and he wanted them to turn themselves in so that Natalie and her son could have closure. Monica and Jason, who are married and have kids of their own, planned the camping trip to intimidate and/or kill him. But Cooper alluded to having an “insurance plan” in case they refused to come clean, so they go back to his apartment to find out what that is. It doesn’t take long for them to break into his laptop and discover a written confession and the location of the lake where they dumped the dead husband’s body eight years ago. A fight breaks out and Cooper accidentally and fatally stabs Jason. Monica knocks Cooper out with a kettlebell, takes his unconscious body, and runs.
Now, why did Monica only take the one body in the car with her? And why didn’t she bother to wipe Cooper’s laptop before doing so – especially since she immediately drives to the lake he identified? Your guess is as good as anybody’s. It’s not her finest hour, especially for someone who already knew how to hide a body. We can assume she planned to do those things later. She doesn’t know that Colter Shaw is on her trail. Colter and Keaton intervene before Monica kills Cooper. Colter talks her down, reminding her that she has not yet committed murder and ruined her children’s lives. There’s still a chance for her to have a future, he says. (Again, she may not be a killer but she’s guilty of a few felonies. Their lives may be a little bit ruined regardless…) Poor Cooper, honestly. He was just trying to do the right thing and ended up killing a second person by accident. But at least he’s safe. Lauren arrives with Sam and hands over the twenty-five thousand dollar reward.
Colter and Reenie Split Some Bubbly In ‘Tracker’ Season 2 Episode 6
At the end of the episode, Reenie brings a bottle of champagne to Colter’s van to celebrate. It’s the first time they’ve hung out IRL since “Noble Rot,” and now the second time she’s made him drink wine. Nothing happens between Reenie and Colter besides some mug clinking (not a euphemism) and light chat, but the energy might make you lean forward a bit. It’s not not romantic. This honestly might be one of their most quietly charged scenes yet. Those tracking their evolving relationship might have also clocked the glam selfie of Reenie that Colter has saved on his phone as her contact. Maybe there’s hope in the future for this ship after all.
