Tracker Season 3 Episode 9: Is Colter Shaw dead after the car crash? His fate explained

Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 landed on December 14, 2025. The episode serves as a midseason finale of CBS’s hit action-drama series.

Titled Good Trouble, the Episode left viewers on the edge of their seats. The cliffhanger saw Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) and John Keaton (Brent Sexton) getting in a car crash. The screen turns blank, and the “To Be Continued” message appears. This uncertainty has left fans wondering about the fate of Shaw and Keaton.

The midseason finale is a dramatic event for the CBS hit drama series that has taken over the broadcast television ratings. The situation around Colter's life is intense, and the new episodes do not return until March 1, 2026. Therefore, the rumors are very hot already.

The shocking finish of Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 raises crucial doubts on the question of whether the character Colter Shaw comes out alive from the crash, and if so, what repercussions await him.

Tracker Season 3 Episode 9: Colter Shaw's fate after the car crash explained

According to showrunner Elwood Reid's confirmation to TVLine, Colter Shaw survives the car crash in Tracker Season 3 Episode 9. Although the cliffhanger intentionally kept the viewers in doubt, Reid explained that the main character of the series has been saved. Nonetheless, his life is saved at a high cost.

In the final moments of the episode, we saw Colter hauling Keaton, who is already bleeding from a gunshot by contract killer Emile Lang (Mark Engelhardt). Then, out of nowhere, bullets start raining on their car. This makes Colter lose control of the vehicle. The car goes flying off the side and lands upside down. It definitely leaves both of them in a perilous situation.

Notably, the show picks up again in March 2026. As per Reid, Colter will be in a “really bad shape.” He is the only one who comes crawling out of that vehicle. At this point, he has been shot and also sustained injuries from the crash.

Reid tells TVLine:

“When we pick up in Part 2 — and I didn't tell anyone else this — he's in really bad shape. He's the only one who crawls out of that car, and then he's got bigger problems.”

Colter is not just physically injured. According to what Reid said, he becomes “a wanted man” because cops think Colter is in cahoots with the killer since he shows up everywhere where the action happens. Turns out, he is at the wrong place, wrong time, all the time. And now, he has to dodge the police, heal up, clear his name, and untangle this conspiracy.

What we know about Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 from the TVLine interview is that Colter is alive, albeit barely. Reid further mentioned that Colter performs a heroic act right at the beginning of Episode 10 to get himself out of the precarious situation, and thus it will be necessary for him to draw on his network of friends, including lawyer Reenie Greene (Fiona Rene) and tech guru Randy (Eric Graise), to assist him in completing his mission.

On the other hand, Keaton’s fate remains ambiguous. Reid got cagey with TV Insider, saying they almost killed Keaton off in Episode 9, but he wouldn’t say if they actually went through with it. We know that he had been coughing blood before the crash, so things aren’t looking great for him.

Reid told TV Insider:

“We went in there, we were going to kill him, but you’ll see what ends up happening. But it was an interesting thing because we did want a cliffhanger, but we knew it would be kind of BS to just have a cliffhanger with Colter in danger. But Colter is also extremely injured. He’s also been shot. You’ll see that when we pick up in Episode 10.”

Now that we know Colter is actually alive, people can finally stop biting their nails about whether he made it and start obsessing over how he is going to dig himself out of this chaos. He is tangled up with a ruthless Armenian mobster, dirty cops who can’t be trusted for a second, and a supposedly dead assassin.

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Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 ditched the case-of-the-week routine and went big with a two-part cliffhanger. When the show returns in March, we will finally see the full extent of Colter’s injuries and whether Keaton made it out alive. There are still 13 Episodes in Season 3, and that means there’s plenty of time untangle all the chaos they dropped on us.

Tracker Season 3 Episode 9 has been one of the most challenging episodes yet, and the protagonists’ survival raises the stakes for the good.

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