Tracker didn’t waste any time bringing back its most popular guest star for an encore performance. In the penultimate episode of Season 1, Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw finally came face-to-face with his estranged brother, Russell, who he thought might have killed their father. Longtime Supernatural star Jensen Ackles (who is also a close friend of Hartley’s in real life) was brought on to play Colter’s older brother, and the two had an instant chemistry on-screen that viewers loved.
While some fans thought it might take a while to get Ackles and Russell back on Tracker, that didn’t turn out to be the case. The second episode of Season 2, which aired on CBS Sunday night, saw Russell and Colter reunite once again, this time in one of the strangest cases we’ve seen on the series so far.
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For those wondering how Tracker brought Russell back into the fold so quickly, it was actually a move from Reenie (Fiona Rene) that roped the elder Shaw brother into the case. While investigating a missing conspiracy theorist at a secret government site — where many believed alien evidence was being kept — Colter himself disappeared.
When Reenie and the rest of the gang couldn’t get a hold of him, she reached out to the one person she knew she could trust to find Colter: his older brother. Russell showed up at the research site to help rescue Colter (though Colter believes the folks at the facility let them escape). For the rest of the episode, Colter and Russell work together, and the latter makes it clear that he is very much a believer in aliens.
What’s most interesting about Russell’s return — and what sets up future stories for the fan-favorite character — is that Reenie was the one to bring him back. He spent a lot of time hitting on Reenie in his first episode back in Season 1, and she wasn’t the least bit interested. In fact, there were several scenes in the latter half of Season 1 that suggested Colter and Reenie might be working towards some kind of relationship. But that never happened, and now it appears Russell has a dinner lined up with Reenie as a “thank you” for helping out with Colter.
The thing is, Russell is a charmer, and Reenie knows it. Whatever might’ve been going on with Colter at the end of Season 1 hasn’t really been addressed in the first couple episodes of Season 2. Perhaps that dinner that isn’t meant to mean anything somehow turns into something?
Regardless of what happens, Reenie spending time with Russell makes for an easy story excuse to bring Ackles back into the fold at any point in Season 2. Given that there are still 20ish episodes left in the season, the odds of him coming back around again feel pretty high.