Tracker Season 3 Episode 5, titled "The Old Ways," felt a little too personal for Justin Hartley's Colter Shaw, and that's because the suspect in the case reminded him a lot of his late father.
Much like Ashton Shaw (Lee Tergesen), the suspect, Richard (Hunter Emery), a radical environmental activist, lived off the grid in the wild (the middle of nowhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains) after taking issue with modern medicine and technology. After abandoning his kids, Jayden and Sarah, a decade ago, shortly after they were born, he decided to reconnect with them, hatching a kidnapping plot along the way after learning that they were moving to Hong Kong following their mother's promotion.
He later revealed that he planned to "wake them up, train them, teach them the old ways of living" with only nature's resources at their disposal because "the world made them too soft."
Colter knew a thing or two about that kind of mentality, having lived with a father who was just like that. The case largely mirrored Colter's childhood, as Ashton was a professor at Berkeley University, who also took on classified projects, until an incident convinced him to move his family to a remote compound in California, where he focused on training them as survivalists.
In his defense, those survivalist skills have come in handy for his gig as a rewardist, though that hasn't made the childhood trauma any easier to deal with.
While hunting down Richard, Colter was reminded of his own upbringing. And growing up with a father just like Richard, a man who shared the same outlook and perspective on life, gave him a leg up in the case—he knew how Richard operated, and he knew how to get through to him.
Related: How Justin Hartley Personally Cast Jensen Ackles as His Brother on ‘Tracker’: ‘I Was Half Joking’
It's also why Colter understood the gravity of the situation, giving Richard a chance to disappear into the woods rather than turning him over to the police. As Luke Parsons (Emerson Brooks), who assisted Colter on the case, later expressed, some people are better off in the wild.
“The Old Ways” – Photo: Colin Bentley/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.It's also why he could get into the mindset of a young boy and what he's feeling; he understood the motivation behind Jayden's decision to reach out to his father. As Colter explained, he needed to "learn the truth about his dad on his own," a powerful statement that describes his own journey in investigating his father's death.
Colter knows all too well the complicated and messy feelings that go along with wanting to know your father—and then being let down by the harsh reality and the unknowns surrounding it.
Colter's relationship with his father only got more complicated following his tragic death, raising more questions about who the man was and why he made the decisions he did. The most recent development—that the death was at the hands of a man named Otto at the behest of his mother–complicates matters even further.
The mystery surrounding Colter's childhood and Ashton's death continues throughout season 3, and for Colter's sake, we'll hopefully get a resolution soon, especially as Randy (Chris Lee) is on the case, looking into a man named David Pearson, a name found in a box of his Ashton's belongings, who will hopefully provide clarity and begin the unraveling.
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