10 Weirdest Cases on Tracker, Ranked

Tracker follows Colter Shaw, played by Justin Hartley, on his journey to locate missing persons for reward money. Using his incredible survivalist skills, his team of helpers, and his Airstream and truck, he travels the country and puts his life on the line to help reunite people with their missing loved ones. This often sees him tackling dangerous cases involving killers, kidnappers, and even the occult.

As the show has progressed through its two seasons to date, already renewed for a third, the cases seem to be getting weirder and weirder. Thus, some of the oddest cases Colter has taken on originate from the later episodes.

10 A Young Man Is Brainwashed By a Cult

One of the first episodes to explore a non-traditional kidnapping or injured person, Colter is called by a set of parents desperately searching for their son, Jackson. He met a woman one day, and ever since, he has been acting weird. He quit his job, left his apartment, and emptied his entire bank account. They can’t even get a hold of him because he cancelled his phone plan. When Colter tracks the man down, he has joined a cult and has no desire to leave. It’s the first case when Colter finds someone who doesn’t actually want to be found.

Colter’s job goes from tracker to psychologist as he tries to reason with Jackson. When that doesn’t work, he infiltrates the cult to get close to its leader, where he is forced to face some of his own demons. The plot thickens when Colter discovers nefarious things about the cult and tries to open Jackson’s eyes to what the people he wants to dedicate his life to are really doing. It’s one of the weakest episodes of season one of Tracker, though it does showcase how every case Colter takes on is unique.

9 Government Conspiracies May Tie Back to Colter’s Father

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What makes this episode so weird is that it seems to tease a bigger narrative, only to end, leaving fans puzzled. When Colter is called to help a man find his wife, Clare, who went into a clothing store's change room and never came out, he quickly discovers that she isn’t who she told him she was. She works for a secret government agency, and when Colter arrives at her office, supposedly a publishing house, he finds everyone dead.

What’s most puzzling about this episode is the call Colter receives from a mysterious person telling him to leave this case alone. Later, after solving it, Reenie receives a letter from Deputy Director Bartholomew, the man Clare identified as her traitorous co-worker Eileen’s boss, thanking Colter for his help. But even Reenie is suspicious that the letter sounds like a veiled warning. The story hasn’t been revisited since, leaving fans to wonder if there was a point at all in introducing this mysterious character.

8 The Victim Was Actually a Horse

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For the first time, Colter sets out to find a loved one that isn’t a human but rather a horse (though he is later hired to find a missing dog in another case in season two). This is the episode where he teams up with an old rival named Billie, played by Hartley’s real-life wife, Sofia Pernas. He’s called in to find a missing prized racehorse in Kentucky, who has a huge race coming up that it can’t miss.

As Colter investigates alongside Billie, whom he’s reluctant to trust, the case takes twists and turns. When they finally discover the culprit, the pair are led into a trap where they almost burn together in a barn. It was a bizarre episode where Colter was looking for an animal, taking him completely out of his comfort zone.

7 A Cupcake Case Turns Into a Mafia War

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Cupcakes and the mafia are at the center of this odd episode, where Colter tries to help Reenie’s boyfriend help a single mom client whose son is in trouble. As it turns out, she’s no sweet cupcake store owner: she’s a mafia boss. And with Colter sniffing around, he is caught in the crosshairs.

Colter ends up on his knees, about to be executed, when one of the men who is close friends with the abducted son spares his life and kills his own ally in a “that never would have happened” moment only made for TV. It’s an unbelievable plot with an even more unbelievable ending.

6 A Creepy, Sadistic Killer Takes Colter to…An Amusement Park

One of the darkest episodes of Tracker, Colter is called to help find a single mother who disappeared, leaving her young son on his own, something she would never do. As he dives deeper into the plot, he discovers that it’s a psychopathic former patient who snagged her, hoping she might help him through his murderous urges.

Colter comes upon some gruesome scenes in this episode that make fans question the show being on network television. The hunt that takes place in an abandoned amusement park adds to the chilling nature of this episode, which seems out of place compared to the usual cases Colter takes on. It’s the first time Colter comes face-to-face with a troubled serial killer, and a more psychologically driven episode than any other.

5 Sacrificial Rituals Come Into Play With a Missing Teen

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Tracker is one of those shows where someone always goes missing, which seems pretty cut and dry. Investigate, find the person, bring them home. However, this episode ventures into the supernatural realm once again. Colter is looking for a teenager named Anton. The story weaves into dark magic, sacrificial rituals, and the powers of immortality, all topics that don’t seem to fit with the nature of the show.

Leaning further into the concept of sci-fi, “Exodus” doesn’t make much sense for an action drama, so it’s no surprise that it’s one of the lower-rated episodes of the series. Black magic and sacrificing teens seem like heavy material for a light and fluffy procedural like this one.

4 Colter Dives Into the Paranormal in a Creepy Abandoned Hospital

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This episode explores the concept of the paranormal as Colter looks for an amateur ghost hunter who has been missing for three years. Her father is convinced that she’s still alive and that she was captured in the background of a recent photo. It’s the first time Colter must reconcile his feelings that this might just be a grieving dad unwilling to let go, and who may not like what he uncovers.

But as Colter visits an abandoned hospital, the episode takes on an eerie feel. It’s a creepy, horror-like episode as Colter deals with bumps in the night, without so much as flinching. He encounters a hole in the wall where someone was watching the young woman and her friend, a creepy squatter, and a murderer who claims to be possessed by demons. The episode is like a mini-horror movie, completely unexpected, especially so early in the series.

3 A Young Teen Taps Into Her Spiritual Side

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Tracker explores the concept of spirituality when the young woman Colter is hired to find possesses unique spiritual gifts. The case isn’t going to yield him a big sum, but Velma implores him to take it anyway because the teenager has had a rough life: she lost her parents a decade ago and has been raised by her older brother ever since.

When Colter finds her, she has been kidnapped by two men who want to use her spiritual gifts to help heal their ailing father. Where this episode takes an even bigger twisted turn, however, is when Colter is shot by an arrow gun and is bleeding out on the ground. Something Emmaline does seems to miraculously save his life. Then, she fends off her kidnappers by threatening to curse them for all eternity.

2 From a Cult to an Abrupt End, This Episode Felt Unfinished

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Cults, kidnapping, and search & rescue combine in this episode, which is weird mostly because of how it ends. Typically, in every case, once Colter finds the missing person and reunites them with their family (or advises their family of their tragic fate), he receives his check and his thanks, then moves on. He might have dinner with Reenie or enjoy a beer outside his truck. In this one, however, after Colter discovers three sadistic men running a little cult in the wilderness, and a terrified young woman who was kidnapped by them years earlier, he saves them, and it simply ends.

There’s no resolution for the two young women he was hired to find. There are no details about who the kidnapped woman was or what the cult was all about. Even the episode begins abruptly. Fans have criticized the poor writing in this episode, which is one of the lowest-rated episodes of the series to date.

1 The Brothers Happen Upon a Secret Government Project Involving Aliens

Jensen Ackles returns as Colter’s older brother, Russell, called in by Reenie when she’s worried she hasn’t heard from Colter since he went to investigate the case of a missing man obsessed with aliens. Colter happens upon some type of government site where the episode dives into the supernatural for the second time since “Aurora.” It calls back to conspiracies that might have something to do with the disappearance of his father, one of the big over-arching mysteries in Tracker. In fact, one of the men tells Russell that he knows who he is and that his father “asked too many questions.”

From the secret site to strange noises and paralyzing lights, the episode suggests that aliens have indeed crashed to Earth, the government is studying them, and the man Colter was hired to find was onto something. It’s a strange episode that takes Colter’s work into uncharted territory.