We’re still just a couple of months into the 2025 TV schedule, and CBS already has great news for many of its current series. No fewer than nine shows have been renewed for the 2025-2026 TV season, with Ghosts even getting a double renewal. Tracker fans in particular have a lot to celebrate, as the renewal for Season 3 comes just days after Justin Hartley‘s drama returned from its winter break with a midseason premiere that delivered some long-awaited closure. The good news reminded me of what Hartley shared about why Tracker should be impossible to make, and it’s clear that all the hard work paid off yet again.
When I spoke with Justin Hartley about Colter Shaw’s determination to finally close a case that has been on his mind for a decade, he opened up about the shooting schedule to produce 22 episodes that air between October and (usually) mid-May. He shared that it “takes eight days for us to film one episode,” and sometimes they just “have to take a break so that the writers can catch up, so the editors can catch up, so the shooting schedule can catch up.”
Considering how action-packed Tracker is on a weekly basis – not to mention a variety of filming locations across Vancouver – I noted to the actor that it doesn’t seem like it should be possible to film a full episode in just over a week. (You can find all episodes so far streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.) Hartley responded:
It shouldn’t be possible, and quite frankly, my body is agreeing with you as well. My body and my brain are like, ‘Dude, what are you doing?’ [laughs] But we get through it. Part of it, honestly, is just making sure that the actors – as you should, it’s the bare minimum – come prepared, and it always blows my mind when you show up to sets with actors and it’s like, ‘How do you show up and not know your lines? How did you sleep last night?’ But on our show, we’ve been really lucky.
Justin Hartley had opened up about the “grueling” schedule for Season 1 that resulted in great ratings and an early renewal in 2024; that doesn’t seem to have changed for Season 2. The This Is Us alum was clear that while he encountered actors who weren’t entirely prepared for work elsewhere in his career, that didn’t apply to Tracker. He went on:
People come in and they got their stuff. That saves a lot of time, because we don’t have a lot of time. We’ll do two takes, maybe one or two takes, and then we’ve got to move on, because you just don’t have time for five, six, seven takes. We have one of the best crews, and I think our writers are so great, and the acting has been so good on the show that I think that that helps with all that stuff. But yeah, eight days is a haul.
When we spoke just days before the winter premiere in Tracker‘s new Season 2 time slot at 8 p.m. ET on CBS Sundays, Hartley said that the show was just “finishing [Episode 16]” with something like “a month and a half left.” All in all, despite how much time is left before Season 2 wraps, it’s not shocking that the network gave an early renewal.
Per CBS’ renewal announcement, Tracker currently ranks as the #1 entertainment series. Plus, the ratings after 35 days are even more impressive than the ratings after a week of availability. At the end of 2024, Tracker averaged an audience of 11.4 million viewers in Live+7 day totals. In Live+35, Tracker is hitting more than 18 million multiplatform viewers. Not only is that a massive total for a network TV drama, but it’s a boost of 4% from the Season 1 totals last year.
So, what’s next for Colter Shaw in the second half of Season 2? With the end of mystery about Gina Pickett’s fate, the serialized story can switch back to the Shaw family drama. Whether that means a return of Jensen Ackles as Russell Shaw remains to be seen, but Hartley teased that the odds of a return from Melissa Roxburgh as Dory Shaw are good. As for Colter’s first case following the winter return, check out the promo for the new episode on February 23:
Tracker kicks off CBS’ new Sunday night lineup in the new year, followed by Morris Chestnut’s freshman series Watson at 9 p.m. ET and Season 5 of Queen Latifah’s The Equalizer at 10 p.m. ET. Of those three, only Tracker has renewed for a new season, although it’s not surprising that Watson‘s fate has yet to be decided, as only two episodes so far have aired.
The other eight recently renewed shows in addition to Justin Hartley’s hit drama are Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, Elsbeth, Ghosts, Fire Country, NCIS, NCIS: Origins, NCIS: Sydney, and Hollywood Squares, joining previously renewed dramas FBI and Matlock.
