After a massive series debut, thanks to the Super Bowl lead-in, Tracker has spent the past couple of weeks settling into its normal time slot on Sunday nights. This past week’s new episode, “Springland,” was the third of the series, and saw Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw stumble into another missing persons case. WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for the new episode of Tracker! Continue reading at your own risk…
Tracker’s latest episode begins with Teddi and Velma telling Colter about a case involving a missing vintage car that comes with a big reward. He stops in a diner for some breakfast and sees a local man get upset about a woman putting up flyers for her missing sister. Colter gets involved and it causes the man to pop one of the tires on his truck. Colter disarms the man and realizes he got a small stab wound in the process.
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Colter gets patched up at a clinic and asks the doctor about the woman whose sister went missing, as he’s planning to take the case on as his next job. The doctor explains that the allegedly missing woman, Mia, is a nomad who had a habit of moving from town to town. While most people think Mia just moved on, her sister believes something bad happened to her, and the people in town don’t like her posting the flyers because it hurts tourism.
“I think I would be careful if I were you,” the doctor tells him. “People don’t like strangers asking questions.”
Mia’s sister, Keira, is waiting for Colter outside of the clinic. The local police officer informs Colter that he had his tire fixed and hoped no charges would be pressed. It’s clear he wants Colter to move on from the town and for Keira to let go of her search. Keira tells Colter about her sister and how she liked to live on the road. She believes something happened to Mia because she had told her where she was going after leaving town, but Keira never got word that she had reached the location. The town of Springland is the last place Mia was seen by anyone, and there’s been no social media or bank activity since then. Keira believes the powerful Winslow family has something to do with Mia’s disappearance. The Winslows are developers trying to turn the town into a tourist destination. Keira says she’s made peace with the fact that Mia might be dead, but she wants to find the truth.
Out in the woods, at the last known location of MIa’s van, Colter finds a camera hooked up to a tree. He gets some help from Bob to look for information on Mia and her van, as well as information on the camera. Tom, the guy who attacked Colter at the diner, finds him in the woods, says he’s trespassing on the Winslow’s land. He tells Colter that Mia was trouble and she’s not worth looking into. Tom’s job for the Winslows is to keep the “van life” partiers off the family’s property. He tells Colter that he tried multiple times to talk with Mia about the property but there were a lot of occasions where she couldn’t be found in the van at all. She wasn’t staying there very often. With the help of Velma and Teddi, a photo of Mia and a guy called Gecko was found online. Colter finds Gecko, a local climber, working on a nearby cliffside. He asks about Mia and Gecko leaves.
Colter finds the doctor from the clinic and shows him a picture of Gecko, and she explains that his real name is Matt Winslow, the son of the town’s powerful developers. He had some small issues with the law over the years, but that it never amounted to much. There was no criminal history because the local law enforcement doesn’t want to cross the Winslow family. He heads out to the Winslow’s mansion to try and talk to Matt, but Matt tries to slip away before their conversation. Colter is able to stop him and they finally talk face-to-face. He says he was in a relationship with Mia but that she left without a lot of warning. She left him a note saying she wanted to move on without him. Matt also explains that Mia had a lot of opinions about the town and his family, and he appreciated that about her. The conversation is interrupted by Matt’s parents and their bodyguard arriving on the scene, they push Colter to leave.
Colter has the note that Mia left Matt, and he shows it to Keira. She confirms that it was from her climbing journal, but that it’s not in her handwriting. While they’re looking into it, Bob calls to explain he found Mia’s van somewhere else on the Winslow property, since they have those field cameras all over the area. Colter finds the van and Keira confirms that it belonged to Mia. As they’re checking it out, someone starts shooting at the van. Someone clearly doesn’t want them to find anything from the site. They’re able to escape, but they still don’t have the answers they need. Keira expresses a lot of regret about the relationship she had with her sister, knowing she probably won’t ever be able to reconcile. Colter takes the sheriff out to see the van location where they were shot at, but the van has completely disappeared. Bob checks the cameras to see who moved it.
Reenie has arrived in Springland at the request of Teddi and Velma. She’s looking into all of the various lawsuits the Winslows have been involved in over the years. The company was sued after the Winslows tried to strong-arm a man into selling his property and his barn ended up being burned down. He was suing the company, with Mia as a planned witness, but he turned up dead before the hearings. Bob gets back to Colter with video from the camera feeds. Colter and Mia find Matt in a bar and press him about Mia. He didn’t know that Mia’s van was found on his family’s property, truly believing she had left town. Matt had told Mia about some of the awful things that his family was doing and she refused to let it go. He was a witness to the burning of the barn and confirms that it was the family’s driver. He says he loved Mia and wanted to leave with her. She decided to testify against the family and he believes she left him because he wouldn’t do the same. So Colter shows him the video of Tony, the Winslow’s driver moving Mia’s van out of the woods.
Colter, Reenie, and Matt go to the Winslow house to confront the family about Mia. They try to put up a tough front and call the sheriff, but Reenie has already spoken to the sheriff about everything. As they all confront Matt’s father about Mia’s death, he pleads that he knew nothing about her murder, that they just intimidated her into leaving town. The truth finally comes out: it was Matt’s mother who had Mia killed. She was afraid Matt was going to run off with Mia and that Mia would take down the family’s business, so she had Tony kill her. Mia’s body was found on another one of the Winslow’s properties.
The episode comes to a close with Carter and Reenie going their separate ways, at least for the time being. She also got a call from his brother and he gives a short version of the story, telling her to block the number. He admits that Russell killed their father and disappeared. Keira pays Colter for finding the truth about Mia and they decide she should fix up her sister’s van as a way to honor her memory.
