When Does Tracker Return in 2026 & How Does the Midseason Finale End?

Brent Sexton’s Keaton needs help searching for his old partner, Dobbs. Dobbs vanished after looking into the recent death of a farmer. As Colter and Keaton track Dobbs’ movements, they unearth a body farm and a deep criminal conspiracy.

Keaton Returns, Asking Colter for Help Finding His Missing Old Partner

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Tracker‘s “Good Trouble” opens with a dairy farmer getting shot by a blurry figure. Colter heads back to Tacoma to meet Keaton. The retired cop’s old partner has gone missing, but Keaton is the only one worried about it.

Colter and Keaton head to Dobbs’ place to check it out. Keaton explains that Dobbs leaving his back door open is unlike him. Colter dumps out Dobbs’ trash and finds a newspaper clipping about the murder of the farmer, leading Colter and Keaton to check it out.

When they investigate the farm, Colter notices some recently disturbed ground in the farmer’s fields. The survivalist hotwires an excavator and starts digging. Keaton sees a body buried in the field. They call in the police, and it turns out there were several bodies buried in the field. Randy works his magic and finds out the farmer has received several payoffs from an LLC owned by an Armenian mobster named Menassian.

Colter and Keaton split up after Keaton gets a call from the police commissioner, Ross Bogart, played by Grimm‘s Sasha Roiz. Bogart charms his fellow officers with a story about one of his cases, but comes off a little too smooth. Bogart asks Keaton to back off now that the mob is involved. Bogart blames the Russians for killing the farmer, thinking a mob war is on the horizon. Keaton is irked at being told to stand down, but Colter is on his way to meet Menassian.

Colter repeats his move to interrogate members of a criminal organization and jumps in the backseat, pointing a gun at the driver. He did the same thing when he needed to question Ronnie Yates in Season 2’s “Echo Ridge.” It remains an effective maneuver as Colter asks Mennasian’s cousin and driver for the Armenian mobster’s location. When Colter gets to the place, he finds Mennasian dead, shot execution style.

The rewardist also spies a camera in the apartment. Colter traces the connected wire to find its storage hardware, so that Randy can hack it. Randy sends Colter footage of Menassian’s death; it turns out it was Dobbs who shot the mobster. Colter’s eagle eyes spot the reflection of a third person in the room in one of the windows. Randy rewinds and zooms in, revealing one of the newest additions to Tracker‘s cast, Mark Engelhardt as Lang.

Colter and Keaton Find Themselves on the Trail of an Assassin with A Mysterious Agenda

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Emile Lang is a contract killer accused of killing a cop named Lindstrom. The mysterious assassin, described as “a man with his own moral code. Cold, calculating and methodical,” was the blurry figure who killed the dairy farmer at the top of the episode. Before Keaton identified Lang from the surveillance footage, he was torturing Dobbs for information. Lang had grabbed Dobbs from Menassian’s place.

Lang asked Dobbs, “Who sent you out to that farm?” Dobbs insisted no one did; that he’d seen it in the paper. Lang didn’t believe Dobbs and demanded, “Tell me where they are.” Lang was likely referring to Cassie Lindstrom, as it was revealed later that he was searching for her. The use of ‘they’ implies there’s someone with her, but who? Lang then asks Dobbs another vague question: “Who knows?”

The next lead for the whereabouts of Lang and Dobbs comes from tracking Menassian’s phone, which Dobbs stole. It takes Colter and Keaton to an accident site, where they find Dobbs lying on a rocky riverbank. Dobbs gives Keaton Menassian’s phone and, with his dying breath, tells his old partner that it wasn’t the Russians. Keaton calls in the accident and Dobbs’ death, but then he and Colter are hot on Lang’s trail.

Lang knocks on the door of Bradley White’s house, posing as a gas company official. Shortly after White lets Lang in to “check the meter,” White receives a text that reads, “SOMEONE KNOWS. GET OUT.” It’s too late, though. Lang ties up White’s housekeeper and forces White to take him to the garage, which is full of shelves and file boxes.

When Keaton and Colter show up shortly after Lang, they search the house. Keaton finds the housekeeper, who tells him that Lang was asking about someone named Cassie Lindstrom. Colter heads to the garage, where he finds White dead. After freeing the housekeeper, Keaton goes to clear the perimeter. He spots a car parked behind a tree, and then Lang walks around to the trunk, loading one of the file boxes from White’s garage.

Lang is following the dominoes after killing the farmer. It seems like he’s dismantling the criminal conspiracy Colter and Keaton stumbled into. In Randy and Reenie’s final scene of the episode, they discover Dobbs was also receiving payoffs from the same LLC owned by the Armenian mob. Colter’s new handlers also identify several other accounts that accepted payments from the criminal front. They decided to dig in and find out who else was on the take. Maybe the police commissioner who kept telling Keaton to stand down?

Tracker’s Winter Finale Leaves Colter and Keaton in Mortal Danger

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When Keaton spotted Lang loading the trunk of his stolen car, he didn’t waste any time and fired at the assassin. Lang returned fire, shooting Keaton in the gut. Colter comes running outside when he hears the shots and finds Keaton on the ground, injured. Keaton loses consciousness, and Colter revives him before loading the retired cop into the car. As the rewardist rushes to the hospital, Keaton starts to cough up blood and groan from the pain.

Colter distracts Keaton by questioning him, asking about what the housekeeper said, and telling him to hang on so they can get Lang. Keaton apologizes for getting Colter into the mess, but Colter insists Keaton will be okay. As they drive down the wooded road, gunshots come from in front of them, with one piercing the windshield and hitting Colter. The survivalist loses consciousness, and the car runs off the road, crashing through trees before flying off a small cliff, landing upside down.

As the car teeters in place, the episode fades to black. In the biggest cliffhanger of Tracker‘s history, Colter and Keaton are both shot and have probably sustained other injuries from the car crash. It’s a mystery who shot them. Was it Lang or someone on the take from the mob trying to stop them? With Mark Engelhardt announced as a new recurring character with his own sense of right and wrong, Lang’s probably not the real villain of this story, but he hasn’t hesitated to kill people who got in his way.

When Does Tracker Return in 2026?

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When Tracker returns March 1st in its new, later time slot at 9 pm, Colter will be hurt, and Keaton may be past saving. If the shooter treks down to the car crash to make sure they finished the job, Colter may have to flee without Keaton, sealing the retired cop’s fate. As Reenie and Randy go down the rabbit hole to uncover who else was on the take, they may find more police in the pocket of the Armenian mob, making reaching out to them for help to find Colter dangerous.

In addition to announcing Lang as a new character, Tracker also added Kathleen Robertson to the roster as Maxine, “a successful attorney at a major firm looking to engage Reenie on what Maxine assures her is simply grunt work for an upcoming class-action suit. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Maxine may have an entirely different game that she’s playing.” It will likely be Reenie’s storyline that was teased following the Season 2 finale. While two new faces are joining CBS’s number one show, there will be at least one familiar face fans can expect after Tracker‘s return.

Billie Matalon, played by Justin Hartley’s wife, Sophia Pernas, is set to return. Hartley confirmed Billie would be back, telling Deadline, “She comes back in a big way. She’s got a really cool thing that she’s helping Colter with.” Hartley and the showrunner, Elwood Reid, have also heavily teased an upcoming storyline where Colter finds himself on the wrong side of the authorities. There are some very exciting things coming up when Tracker returns on March 1st at 9 pm on CBS.