Tracker Season 3 Episode 5: Justin Hartley’s Colter Gets Pulled Into a Kid Case That Reopens Old Wounds

Tracker pulls a neat trick this week: it serves up a missing-kids case that doubles as a mirror for Colter Shaw’s past, and it lands harder than you’d expect.

Season 3, Episode 5: The Old Ways

Colter steps in when four teens vanish, and the trail circles back to family. Jayden, one of the kids, has been sneaking off to meet his biological father, Richard Sandford — a guy who bailed years ago to live off the grid and now wants to drag the kids out there with him. So we’re hiking through the woods, and Colter starts clocking familiar patterns: a dad absolutely convinced he knows best, even as he’s steering his kids straight into danger.

When Colter finally catches up to Richard, he doesn’t throw a punch. He levels with him. He talks about his own messy childhood, how control masquerading as protection can do real damage, and why forcing kids into your worldview isn’t love. It’s surprisingly disarming. Richard backs off and lets the teens go home. No showdown. No chest-beating. Just empathy doing the work. It’s also Colter quietly processing his old wounds in real time — the show making it clear that his past isn’t just backstory; it’s his method.

Colter and Ashton: the blueprint for this episode

If you’ve been watching, you know Colter’s dad, Ashton Shaw, is basically the key that unlocks everything about who Colter is — the skills, the instincts, and the scars. Lee Tergesen plays Ashton as a brilliant, volatile survivalist who yanked his family off the grid to a remote cabin because he was convinced they were being watched and persecuted. Protection was the sales pitch; instability was the lifestyle.

Growing up, Colter (Justin Hartley) got world-class training in tracking, self-reliance, and staying alert — useful, sure — but it came wrapped in secrecy and fear. Where does smart caution end and full-on paranoia begin? That line was never clear, which is why Ashton ends up both mentor and mystery. Adult Colter is still trying to solve him.

Ashton Shaw: the timeline so far

• Pre-cabin days: Ashton starts out as a lecturer in the Science Department at UC Berkeley, then becomes a professor and environmental science researcher.
• The government years: he’s quietly recruited for classified work and eventually runs a top-secret program.
• 1992 pivot: he abruptly quits and relocates the family to a remote part of California, setting the survivalist phase in motion.
• The death: across Seasons 1 and 2, we learn Ashton died after falling off a cliff.
• The twist: in the Season 2 finale, Colter confronts Otto, a former colleague of Ashton’s. Otto admits he pushed Ashton off that cliff — and says he did it at the request of Colter’s mother, Mary.
• The implication: Otto also suggests Ashton had plenty of enemies, which makes his paranoia look a lot more like justified fear.

Where Season 3 is aiming

All signs point to the show digging into why Ashton changed so radically and what secrets actually got him killed. If this week is any indication, the answers won’t come with explosions; they’ll come with uncomfortable conversations and a few emotional gut punches.

What’s your read on Ashton’s fall? And what is Mary not telling Colter?

Tracker is streaming on Paramount+.