Jensen Ackles is officially back to filming season 3 of Justin Hartley‘s Tracker after the show lost multiple cast members.
Ackles, 47, took to Instagram on Wednesday, July 30, to share a video of him on set, saying, “Good to be back in action.” The actor encouraged TV fans to watch the newest episode of his Prime Video series Countdown while they await for him to “eventually down the road” reunite with Hartley, 48, on Tracker.
His return comes after Eric Graise, who played Bobby in the first two seasons, and Abby McEnany, a.k.a Velma, both departed the hit CBS show. This leaves only Hartley and Fiona Rene from the main cast as the series prepares to kick off production on season 3.
Tracker previously saw Robin Weigert exit the show following the season 1 finale. Weigert’s character, Teddi, was written off in the season 2 premiere by having her wife, Velma, reveal that they needed some distance. Velma then started working with Reenie (Rene), and Teddi wasn’t discussed despite her prominent presence on the show’s first season.
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Viewers previously had concerns that there could be more departures after executive producer Elwood Reid exclusively told Us Weekly about possible onscreen changes.
“I do think it’s evolving. If I can’t evolve those characters — Randy or Reenie or Bobby — they’re not just people that just pick up the phone and go, ‘OK, here is the answer.’ That’s when the show is phoning it in,” he explained to Us in May. “The challenge is when you got to learn about them, which I thought was interesting. That’s the challenge of the show is not having it fall into a formula.”
Reid noted that they didn’t want Tracker to “fall into complacency.”
“The only rule I really have of the show is each week Colter is going to come to a new place and there’s going to be a new case. How he gets those answers and what he uses on the team, that’s all something that’s up for grabs,” Reid teased. “Meeting these [local] weird characters is something we’re going to try to do more of as the season goes on. Just Colter coming in and interacting with other characters. That’s fun to see Justin flex those muscles with really good guest cast members.”
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Tracker, which premiered in February 2024, largely focuses on fictional survivalist Colter Shaw (Hartley) as he travels the country to help solve various missing persons cases. Ackles, for his part, plays Colter’s brother, Russell.
While Tracker is looking to switch some things up, Reid didn’t rule out expanding the universe with a spinoff.
“I’m going to try to steal Jensen,” he quipped to Us. “We worked on another show of mine before, so I’m going to try to kidnap him back from The Boys [and Countdown].”
Tracker is currently streaming on Paramount+.
