Tracker Recap With Spoilers: “Beyond the Campus Walls”

With the end of the season in sight, Sunday’s new episode of Tracker may be one of the series’ most pivotal so far. “Beyond the Campus Walls” brings in guest star Melissa Roxburgh, well-known for her starring turn in Manifest, to play Colter Shaw’s little sister, Dory. If you recall, Dory was featured in a flashback during the Tracker series premiere, so this is the first time fans are catching up with her in Colter’s modern day story. Of course, this episode will also likely set the stage for the arrival of their older brother, Russell Shaw, in the penultimate episode. Below, you can check out the full, spoiler-filled recap of Tracker‘s new episode.

Colter kicks off the episode in Wyoming, looking for a missing college student named Blake. The first scene shows Blake at a party mistakenly grabbing the arm of a girl he thought was someone else, and getting beaten up by her boyfriend tor it. Blake’s Mom works at the school and says she hasn’t worried about him and that he left his phone behind when he disappeared. According to her, Blake had been under pressure from his anxiety and his biochemistry grant project. After a little more prodding from Colter, Blake’s mom reveals that her brother had a psychotic break and schizophrenic episode when he was the same age as Blake, and she worries there may be something similar going on.

Colter pops into of the classrooms on the Wyoming Science campus where his sister is giving a lecture on thermodynamics. She reveals they haven’t spoken in a year, and that he hasn’t returned any of her calls. That said, they’re both clearly on good terms with one another. He shares the folder about their dad that he found one while investigating a cult earlier in the season. One part of the file reveals that their dad was employed by the government for seven years, and that’s something their mom never told them. She reveals she recently talked to Russell and that he’s been wanting to get in touch with Colter. 

Colter heads to the lab where Blake worked to get some more information about his grant project and the people he interacted with most. The scientists in the lab seems to have a disagreement on what happened to Blake. One thinks he bailed while another doesn’t think he would abandon the work like that. The professor tells Colter that they had a difficult conversation about Blake falsifying data. The conversation resulted in Blake getting his lab access revoked. The professor also explains that everything has to be under intense scrutiny because there could be a lot of money involved after things expand. Colter pulls aside the student that backed Blake up and she says she saw Blake drunk on the other side of town two nights before. She said it was strange that he was out at a party, because that’s not usually his scene. Bobby digs up some information from Blake’s phone and social records, showing a lot of communications and files being sent between Blake and somebody else.

Investigating the location of the party where Blake was last scene, Colter breaks into a quiet house and searches through its empty rooms. In the very back room he finds a bed with restraints attached to it, a closet full of cameras and BDSM props, and an iPad with pictures of Blake. Bobby cracked the accounts and figured out Blake had been talking a lot to someone with the alias “BlondieBaby.” She was supposed to be at the party but she didn’t show up. There were pictures of a woman in the messages between them. Irene is the young woman in the photo, and her photos were taken in the same room where Colter just was. He goes to the equipment rental store where the camera came from and finds Irene there working. She denies everything but he brings up one of the photos and she admits that she was catfishing Blake for “leverage.”

Irene says she and her husband, Chuck, were hired by someone on the dark web to get leverage on Blake. The people that hired them wanted to intimidate Blake so he would “keep his mouth shut” about some sort of secret information he had. While they talk, Colter finds a bloodstain on the carpet and has Irene show him the security video. The video shows Chuck assaulting Blake and hitting his head on the counter. Neither one of them have been seen since that happened. Irene claims she doesn’t want any part of things like this but only does it because Chuck makes her, so she agrees to help Colter make things right.

Colter and Irene are getting ready to put their plan into action when Dory shows up at his Airstream because he missed the dinner they had planned. He explains what’s going on and that he can’t get the police involved because he thinks Blake could still be alive and their involvement would reduce those chances. They get the information to meet with the original client and set him up to think he’s only meeting Irene. Colter hops out of the truck and chases the hooded man into the woods. He catches the man and pulls the hood down to find Dax, the other student from the grant project. Dax didn’t know about any of the previous problems with Blake, he just gave the professor the information about a dark web contact. The truth about the project is that Blake’s data were actually right and they showed the project wasn’t as successful as the professor told his investors. Colter convinces Dax to lie to the professor and say everything went according to plan.

Colter calls Dory and tells him about Lyle, the professor that was blackmailing Bake and potentially has him hostage. He asks her where Lyle could be holding Blake and she brings up the old bomb shelters on campus. They meet at the biochem lab and head to the shelter together, despite Colter wanting her to stay back. Chuck is holding Blake hostage and asking for the evidence about the grant project so that he can get paid. Lyle shows up saying he heard from Dax and got a location on the evidence, which we know is the lie that Colter helped created. Chuck tells Lyle the only way to potentially fix everything is to kill Blake, but the professor doesn’t want to do that. Blake says the evidence is going to get out whether he’s alive or dead. Lyle instead kills Chuck and hides in the next room with Blake when he hears Colter coming. Colter shoots Lyle in the shoulder to take him down and save Blake. Lyle is potentially spending life in prison. Dax will get in some trouble not enough to tank his future. The evidence was hid in a locker back in the lab the entire time.

Dory and Colter finally have dinner the night before Colter is set to leave town and head to his next job. She asks why he doesn’t keep up or visit more, and she thinks part of him resents her for leaving when they were younger. He says their mom needed him so he stayed back. Dory reminds him that their mom was complicit in all their dad’s actions and he can’t keep excusing her for it. She wants Colter and Russell to be her brothers again. Their mom is hanging on to the past and holding it over them to keep things the way they used to be. She tells Colter that their mom has been feeding and perpetuating a lie about Russell and she wants them to put it behind them. She ends the dinner encouraging him to call Russell