How Tracker Season 2 Premiere Wrote Off Major Cast Member After Exit

Justin Hartley‘s CBS series Tracker was tasked with writing off a major cast member after a surprising exit — but how did the show execute the onscreen change?

During the season 2 premiere, which aired on Sunday, October 13, Velma (Abby McEnany) mentioned some distance between her and her wife, Teddi (Robin Weigert), which is why she is spending more time helping Reenie (Fiona Rene).

“[Teddi] is going to be there for a while. She is helping her mom get sorted. I was getting in the way you might say and it really wasn’t good,” Velma admitted. “So I came back. Don’t you worry because I am keeping busy.”

It was confirmed in August that Weigert would not return as a series regular after appearing on the show consistently throughout the first season. Weigert mostly shared the screen with McEnany as they helped Hartley’s character, Colter, help solve various missing cases all over the country for the reward money.

Hartley teased how the story lines would evolve in the second season, telling TV Insider in September, “At the end of last season, Reenie decides that she’s leaving her firm and going to go it on her own. She’s got that big life change and, in a way, she teams up with Velma and you’ll see a lot of the two of them working together, which is a really interesting dynamic.”

The narrative shakeup meant Velma will be pivoting to a new job while her wife isn’t around. “[Reenie and Velma] both have common goals with just some completely different ways of going about their business,” the actor continued. “Bobby [Eric Graise] our computer whiz, is hacking away. Then we have a couple of really cool surprises coming for Reenie.”

Hartley also explained how Jensen Ackles and Melissa Roxburgh would return to play his character, Colter’s siblings despite their busy schedules. (After both being introduced in the first season, Ackles, 46, booked the upcoming Prime Video thriller series Countdown while Roxburgh, 31, is set to lead the NBC midseason drama The Hunting Party.)

“[Melissa]’s show ends [production] way before we end so we can bring her back in the latter episodes of our show,” the actor noted. “And then Jennifer Morrison‘s coming back to direct episode 6. I’m sure her character will be back.”

Based on Jeffery Deaver’s novel The Never Game, Tracker premiered in February after Super Bowl LVIII and immediately found its audience as people tuned in weekly to watch their favorite fictional survivalist. 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, which introduces new cases for Colter to solve.

“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 told Deadline in May about future plans for the show. “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 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Paramount+.