Justin Hartley released an exciting storyline for the season 3 finale Tracker that would make his character die – and go to heaven.
Tuesday, May 5, episode of The Tonight Showthe host Jimmy Fallon had Hartley, 49, answering interview questions by reading pre-written answers on index cards. The actor was asked how his CBS series would wrap up season three — and Hartley couldn’t hold back his laughter at the answer he was given to read.
“The season 3 finale, this is actually kind of a spoiler. But basically my character dies and goes to heaven,” Hartley said. “The angels are like, ‘Help, Abraham Lincoln is missing.’ So I track him down and it turns out he’s at Jamba Juice. It was unbelievable.”
While the ending may not show Colter in nearly the same condition, Hartley didn’t rule it out as an option.
“It’s important to keep putting things in. I like to be Colter as a hero, to find people and all that. I really like to see him in an exciting, suspicious and dangerous situation,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in April 2025. “I don’t want our audience to forget that this man dies, he’s not a hero. He can die very dangerous! The things he does are very dangerous!
Based on Jeffery Deavera novel The Never Game, Tracker follows Colter as he travels across the country helping to find missing people (or sometimes dogs) and solving cases that others cannot.
“I just love that when you watch a show like that and you tune in to season 1 and you tune in to last season, you see the growth of a character and you say, ‘Wait a minute, are they playing a different role?’ But when you watch it over the years, you get those things with the characters,” Hartley told TV Insider earlier in September 2024. “As talented and confident as Colter is, I don’t think at all that he doesn’t have a ton to learn, especially about himself and his family and all that.”
Hartley continued: “Going forward, I think that’s going to be the way this show lives in the long run, that we keep developing this character and he gets better at what he does.
More recently, a senior producer Elwood Reid he measured Colter’s fate, he said Us Weekly in October 2025, “Another danger is here because he’s not a policeman, he’s this guy who keeps poking his nose in places, the network is always like, ‘He can mess up, he can’t fight, he can be pointed at the head and pointed at with a gun.’ Justin hinted at a mid-season 3 finale that didn’t go well for Colter. That’s what makes him happy that he’s not a hero.”
Reid noted that Tracker he is always looking for ways to surprise the audience.
“When I watch a lot of these types of shows, the minute a character doesn’t make a mistake or have a flaw, I lose interest,” Reid explained. “I love when characters are flawed and they make mistakes and they die and they can get hurt and they can’t hurt.”
He continued: “I’m very careful not to make Colter out of character. We let him go, we let him do the wrong thing. I think that’s what makes the character fun to write – at least for me.”
Tracker airs Sundays on CBS at 9 pm ET before airing the next day on Paramount+.
