TL;DR: Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 delivers a tightly wound, emotionally brutal midseason finale that deepens the show’s conspiracy arc and ends on a gut-punch cliffhanger. With standout performances, smart pacing, and real consequences, “Good Trouble” proves Tracker is at its strongest when it’s willing to hurt us.
Tracker Season 3
I went into Tracker Season 3 Episode 9, “Good Trouble,” expecting a solid midseason thriller. What I didn’t expect was to finish the episode staring at my TV like it had personally wronged me, muttering “no, no, no” the way I do when a Soulslike boss deletes my health bar in two hits. This episode doesn’t just escalate the season’s central mystery — it detonates it, then throws one of the show’s most beloved supporting characters into the blast radius and dares us to wait weeks for answers.
Tracker has always thrived when it leans into paranoia, conspiracy, and the creeping realization that Colter Shaw is usually five steps ahead of everyone except the people who truly scare him. “Good Trouble” is the purest distillation of that energy so far this season. It’s moody, violent, morally murky, and structured like a pressure cooker that refuses to release steam. By the time the screen cuts to “To Be Continued…,” the episode has earned every ounce of dread it leaves behind.
The episode opens in rural Tacoma with a dairy farmer stepping into the night, responding to nothing more threatening than restless cattle. Tracker loves these deceptively calm openings, the kind where you know something awful is coming but you’re powerless to stop it. When the headlights flare and the farmer is executed without ceremony, it immediately reframes the episode’s tone. This isn’t a puzzle-of-the-week. This is a warning.
That murder ripples outward through the narrative in a way that feels methodical and cruel. It’s the kind of storytelling choice that Tracker has gotten very good at in Season 3: start small, then reveal how deeply rotten the system really is. Every breadcrumb leads somewhere darker, and every answer comes with an asterisk.
Let’s address the emotional elephant in the room: Brent Sexton’s John Keaton is back, and the show knows exactly what it’s doing with him. Keaton has always been one of Tracker’s secret weapons — a character who feels lived-in, bruised by experience, and just cynical enough to make Colter’s moral compass wobble when they share the screen.
The fact that this episode finally gives him a first name feels almost ominous in retrospect. It’s the TV equivalent of a horror movie character talking about their retirement plans. Keaton pulls Colter into the case of his missing former partner, Nat Dobbs, and from that moment on, the episode becomes less about solving a crime and more about watching two men realize they might be standing on opposite sides of a truth neither of them wants to face.
Justin Hartley continues to sell Colter’s unique brand of intelligence. He’s not the smartest man in the room because he knows the most facts; he’s the smartest because he notices the things others overlook. A newspaper clipping in the trash. An excavator that doesn’t belong. The timing of a murder that conveniently delays an investigation. Hartley plays these moments with restraint, and it keeps Colter grounded even when the plot starts stacking bodies like a grim ledger.
The discovery of multiple buried bodies beneath the farmer’s pasture is one of the episode’s most chilling sequences, not because of gore, but because of implication. These weren’t random victims. They were criminals. People who slipped through the cracks or operated in the gray areas long enough to make enemies with resources.
Detective Willa Simms’ involvement adds another layer of tension. Jes Macallan brings an edge to Simms that feels both weary and dangerous, like someone who knows the department’s sins but has learned which ones are survivable to acknowledge. When Tacoma PD shuts Colter and Keaton out, it doesn’t feel procedural. It feels protective.
That feeling only intensifies when Commissioner Ross Bogart enters the picture. Sasha Roiz plays him with just enough ambiguity to keep you guessing. Is he corrupt? Complicit? Or just another official trying to keep a lid on a boiling pot? Tracker smartly doesn’t answer that yet. Instead, it lets suspicion metastasize.
The episode’s middle stretch turns into a slow unpeeling of a conspiracy that links organized crime, shell companies, and law enforcement in ways that feel uncomfortably plausible. Dobbs’ connection to Armenian crime boss Zhan Menassian reframes everything we thought we knew about the missing detective. When Dobbs is revealed to have killed Menassian, the show doesn’t frame it as a twist for shock value. It frames it as inevitability.
The introduction of Emil Lang, a contract killer who should be dead, is classic Tracker escalation. A man who works alone, doesn’t leave witnesses, and somehow still exists in the margins of official records. The visual trick of spotting Lang’s reflection in a window is one of my favorite moments in the episode because it reinforces Colter’s almost preternatural observational skills. He doesn’t just see clues. He sees patterns.
Keaton’s unease around Dobbs feels genuine, and Sexton sells the internal conflict beautifully. There’s no mustache-twirling betrayal here. Just a man realizing that the person he trusted may have been lying to himself as much as to anyone else.
When Colter and Keaton finally find Dobbs, the scene is devastating in its restraint. No dramatic monologue. No last-minute redemption arc. Just a wounded man apologizing before dying with answers still locked inside him. It’s a narrative choice that hurts in the best way because it denies closure.
Keaton’s reaction is raw, and it feeds directly into the episode’s final act, where emotion overrides caution. The hunt for Lang becomes personal, reckless, and dangerous in a way that Tracker usually reserves for season finales. When Keaton takes a bullet during the confrontation near the lake, my stomach dropped. Tracker doesn’t often injure its supporting cast this severely, and it knows exactly how to exploit that vulnerability.
The final sequence is brutal. Keaton bleeding out in the back seat. Colter talking him through consciousness like a battlefield medic. Reenie and Randy uncovering evidence that suggests corruption within Tacoma PD runs far deeper than anyone realized. And then, as if that weren’t enough, a sniper’s bullet shatters the windshield and sends the car off the road.
Cut to black.
No resolution. No comfort. Just the implication that Tracker might actually be willing to kill off one of its best characters to raise the stakes going into the back half of Season 3.
This is the kind of cliffhanger that works because it feels earned. The episode meticulously builds tension, lays emotional groundwork, and then pulls the rug out without cheating. It doesn’t rely on gimmicks. It relies on investment.
If Tracker Season 3 has been about exposing the systems that fail people, Episode 9 is where that theme fully crystallizes. Everyone here is compromised in some way — by money, loyalty, fear, or history. Colter remains the show’s moral anchor, but even he can’t outrun the consequences forever.
“Good Trouble” is tense, smart, and unapologetically bleak. It respects the audience enough to let silence linger and questions fester. And if this episode is any indication of what’s coming next, Tracker isn’t just raising the bar for itself — it’s daring CBS procedural television to grow up a little.
