Tracker’s Season 2 Premiere Had Biggest Audience Since Series Debut

Tracker has officially scored the title of this fall’s most-watched TV premiere.

The CBS series, which returned on Sunday, October 13, brought in 8.3 million total viewers, which was nearly 10 percent up in viewership from the season 1 finale. The season 2 premiere also marked the show’s highest audience since the series debuted in February after the Super Bowl.

Tracker is the most-watched broadcast premiere since NCIS‘ final episode with Mark Harmon in September 2021. According to the ratings, Tracker even beat out CBS’ reimagined Matlock reboot, which drew in 7.7 million during its sneak peek premiere last month.

Based on Jeffery Deaver’s novel The Never Game, Tracker immediately found its audience after it debuted earlier this year. After the show’s first season finale, viewership numbers confirmed that Tracker was the most watched series from the 2023-24 TV season. The show was already renewed for a second season at the time.

Tracker is centered around a survivalist named Colter (Justin Hartley) who travels the country helping people and law enforcement tackle a variety of mysteries. As the series unfolds, viewers learn more about how Colter’s past shaped his current life as a lone wolf.

Hartley, 47, not only stars in the show but also serves as an executive producer alongside This Is Us producer and director Ken Olin. Hartley’s role behind the scenes has allowed him to surprise fans with exciting guest stars — including his wife, Sofia Pernas, and Jensen Ackles.

“I’m excited about it. It’s been a long time coming. Ken Olin and I built this show from the group up years ago, before This Is Us even finished filming our final season. We’ve been at this for years, through a pandemic, and a strike, and on and on,” he told Entertainment Tonight in February. “We poured our hearts and souls into this thing and started working on this what seems like forever [ago]. It’s a labor of love for sure. I’m really proud of it and just happy to finally get a chance for people to see it.”

That same month, the actor opened up about how he made Colter appealing for all audience members, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “I think a lot of times, it’s all about the message or this political topic. Sometimes, it gets lost in the shuffle that we are entertainers. I want people to watch something and to be entertained.”

He continued: “Colter Shaw is not agenda-driven, necessarily. He’s a businessman. He takes the money, that’s how he makes his living. He’s not politically driven. He’s driven by doing the right thing. And, where does that come from? Well, that comes from his childhood, and we unpack that in the series.”

Hartley teased that fans can expect bigger and even better storytelling in the second season.

“We have a whole other season to shoot that we have to make better than season 1. So while we wanted all those story lines wrapped up, we also wanted those bows to sort of lead to other questions — bigger, deeper questions — about his past,” Hartley teased to Deadline in May. “So I think we did that in answering some of these questions that we had built up all year. I think we did a good job of making sure that the answers to those questions then lead to a bigger mystery, something that we can unpack in season 2.”

Tracker airs on CBS Sundays at 8:30 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Paramount+.