Justin Hartley’s Tracker Moves to a New City After Cast Shake-Up — Here’s Why It Matters
Justin Hartley’s Tracker is heading to Los Angeles for season 4, snagging a record-breaking California tax credit and pulling the hit CBS series out of Vancouver.
Tracker is packing its bags. When the show comes back for season 4, Justin Hartley and company won’t be in Vancouver anymore — they’re heading to Los Angeles, lured by a monster California tax break.
LA, here we come
On Monday, May 4, word dropped that CBS is relocating Tracker to LA for season 4 with what’s being billed as the biggest California tax credit for a series to date. Translation: the state cut a very large check — $48 million — and production said, cool, see you in June.
The first three seasons were shot in Vancouver. Now the show’s studio, 20th Television, is in the middle of locking down stages and facilities in and around Los Angeles, with cameras set to roll in late June.
"I’m proud of what we built in Vancouver. I’m also very excited we’re bringing Tracker to L.A.," Hartley, 49, said, adding a big thank you to the fans for showing up every step of the way.
- Production move: Vancouver to Los Angeles for season 4
- Why the switch: a record-setting $48 million California tax credit
- Timing: filming slated to begin in late June
- Studio: 20th Television is securing LA-area facilities now
- Premiere history: series launched in February 2024
Where the story stands (and who’s still around)
If you hopped on late, Tracker follows Hartley’s Colter, a lone-wolf survivalist who crisscrosses the country taking on missing-persons cases. Along the way the show built out a team around him: handlers Teddi (Robin Weigert) and Velma (Abby McEnany), hacker Bobby (Eric Graise), and attorney Reenie (Fiona Rene). The lineup hasn’t been static. Weigert’s character was written off, and McEnany and Graise exited soon after. Reenie has remained a factor, and Colter is, obviously, the constant.
How season 4 might feel different
Executive producer Elwood Reid has been pretty blunt about not wanting the series to drift into formula. Back in May 2025, he talked about pushing the supporting players — Randy, Reenie, Bobby — beyond being walking info-dumps. The goal is to make them feel like people with lives, not just voices on the phone delivering the answer of the week.
Reid’s one unbreakable rule: every episode drops Colter into a new place with a new case. How he solves it — and who from the team he taps, if anyone — stays flexible. He also said they want to lean harder into the oddball locals Colter meets; that guest-cast chemistry lets Hartley play in different gears.
By December 2025, Reid was framing it this way: if a character clicks, they’ll bring them back when it makes sense — not every time, but enough to make the world feel connected. The only true anchor is Colter himself. Reid loves that the guy is a puzzle, to us and to himself. We get flashes of his past in his downtime; they may never snap all those pieces together, and that’s kind of the point.
One small but important tweak the team called out: putting more characters in the same room. Less speakerphone exposition, more face-to-face friction. It sounds basic, but it tightened the show’s energy, and viewers seemed to respond.
When and where to watch
Tracker airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.