CBS’s Tracker took a dark and chilling turn in “First Fire,” delivering what might be the show’s most horror-infused hour to date. The story fuses psychological tension, religious fanaticism, and moral reflection into an unnerving but emotionally grounded thriller. It’s Tracker in full cinematic mode, eerie, urgent, and unexpectedly tragic.
The episode opens with a sequence straight out of a gothic horror film: a stormy Halloween night at a psychiatric detention centre in Wyndham, Massachusetts. As lightning flickers, the facility plunges into darkness, alarms blaring, staff scrambling through emergency protocol. One of them is attacked by a masked figure in a pig mask, a genuinely unsettling image that sets the tone. By morning, the truth emerges: one of the patients, Heston Koontz, a convicted arsonist who burned a family alive, has escaped.
Enter Colter, drawn into the case by Reenie, who tells him the Koontz family is offering a hefty reward if he finds their son before the police do. On paper, it’s an unusual case for Colter, a fugitive manhunt rather than a missing person, but the desperate parents’ plea wins him over. Their backstory is gut-wrenching: a son plagued by waking nightmares, unexplained violence, and obsession that spiralled into tragedy. Their guilt still lingers from when they tried to warn the police years ago but were ignored, and now history may be repeating itself. Their grief gives the case moral weight, grounding the procedural beats in something far more human.
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| “First Fire” – TRACKER, Pictured: Derek Richardson as Detective Dundee and Justin Hartley as Colter. Photo: Darko Sikman/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
At the Wyndham facility, Colter’s partnership with Detective Dundee becomes the episode’s backbone. Dundee, protective of his jurisdiction and skeptical of Colter’s involvement, warns him not to “break protocol.” Naturally, Colter ignores that almost immediately. Together, they pick through the remnants of the escape: a painted mural of The Fall of the Damned, scattered news clippings of Emily (the lone survivor of Heston’s original fire) and the eerie suggestion that the breakout was meticulously planned.
Colter’s investigative instincts click into gear when he finds a key card lodged in a vent, suggesting an inside job. It’s classic Tracker deduction, physical evidence tied to human motive, and Hartley sells every detail with grounded confidence. The discovery leads Colter to an orderly named Bill Prugalidad, who turns up dead in his garage, and a cryptic link to a religious organization called "The Sisters of the Sacred Fire." The connection between a psychiatric killer and a devout nun may sound odd on paper, but the writing plays it with unsettling realism.
Meanwhile, in a subplot that hints at future developments, Reenie interviews candidates for an assistant, landing on Melanie Day, an ambitious young woman with a tragic past and suspicious curiosity about Colter. Her interest in the team feels just a shade too intense, a subtle thread that’s clearly going to unravel later.
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| “First Fire” – TRACKER, Pictured: Derek Richardson as Detective Dundee, Justin Hartley as Colter and Karin Konoval as Mother Superior. Photo: Darko Sikman/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Back in Wyndham, Colter realizes that Heston’s escape isn’t what it seems. The evidence at the Sacred Fire convent turns up disturbing clues including a cut-out mattress padding hiding a journal of confession, a hidden blueprint of the detention centre, and the revelation that Sister Carlotta, a nun who’d been “spiritually counselling” Heston, orchestrated the breakout. She’d written letters petitioning for his transfer and, as Colter deduces, had fallen under his manipulative ways. Yet the deeper truth is even darker: Carlotta isn’t Heston's saviour, she’s his captor.
The episode pivots from procedural to full-blown horror as Colter and Dundee uncover a fanatic splinter sect within the church called "Fidelis," a group obsessed with purging “demonic possession” through ritual exorcism. Carlotta and her accomplice, Jared, believe Heston’s mental illness is evidence of demonic control and that Emily, the girl he once targeted, is the “emotional tether” needed to “cleanse” him. The revelation reframes everything: Heston didn’t escape at all, he was kidnapped for an exorcism.
The climax is brutal and haunting. In the collapsing house that was the setting of Heston’s original crime, Colter and Dundee storm in to find the ritual already underway. Sister Carlotta smears her own blood into crosses on Heston’s and Emily’s foreheads while chanting prayers. Gasoline puddles around them. It’s religious madness framed as redemption, and it’s terrifying. Dundee is stabbed in the chaos; Colter fights through Jared to reach Emily as flames roar. In the end, Heston sacrifices himself, killing Jared and saving Emily before being shot. It’s a small, tragic redemption for a man defined by destruction.
When the smoke clears, the emotional fallout lands quietly. Dundee survives, and Colter is left to face Heston’s grieving parents. He refuses their payment, telling them, “I collect only in success,” and urges them instead to give the money to Emily “so she can do something good with it.” It’s a quietly powerful moment that captures the moral heart of Tracker: Colter isn’t just a bounty hunter. He’s a man trying to restore balance in a world where people break in ways that can’t always be fixed.
The episode pivots from procedural to full-blown horror as Colter and Dundee uncover a fanatic splinter sect within the church called "Fidelis," a group obsessed with purging “demonic possession” through ritual exorcism. Carlotta and her accomplice, Jared, believe Heston’s mental illness is evidence of demonic control and that Emily, the girl he once targeted, is the “emotional tether” needed to “cleanse” him. The revelation reframes everything: Heston didn’t escape at all, he was kidnapped for an exorcism.
The climax is brutal and haunting. In the collapsing house that was the setting of Heston’s original crime, Colter and Dundee storm in to find the ritual already underway. Sister Carlotta smears her own blood into crosses on Heston’s and Emily’s foreheads while chanting prayers. Gasoline puddles around them. It’s religious madness framed as redemption, and it’s terrifying. Dundee is stabbed in the chaos; Colter fights through Jared to reach Emily as flames roar. In the end, Heston sacrifices himself, killing Jared and saving Emily before being shot. It’s a small, tragic redemption for a man defined by destruction.
When the smoke clears, the emotional fallout lands quietly. Dundee survives, and Colter is left to face Heston’s grieving parents. He refuses their payment, telling them, “I collect only in success,” and urges them instead to give the money to Emily “so she can do something good with it.” It’s a quietly powerful moment that captures the moral heart of Tracker: Colter isn’t just a bounty hunter. He’s a man trying to restore balance in a world where people break in ways that can’t always be fixed.
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| “First Fire” – TRACKER, Pictured: Derek Richardson as Detective Dundee and Karin Konoval as Mother Superior. Photo: Darko Sikman/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
“First Fire” stands out as one of Tracker’s strongest episodes because it takes risks. It’s darker, more atmospheric, and emotionally deeper than most network procedurals dare to go. The episode plays like a self-contained horror film, complete with religious symbolism, moral ambiguity, and raw tragedy. The cinematography- flickering candlelight, fire reflections, the storm-drenched asylum, gives it an almost True Detective like texture. But what really anchors it is Hartley’s performance. Colter remains stoic, analytical, but deeply human; the way he looks at Heston’s parents in that final scene says everything about guilt, grace, and the limits of redemption.
This episode proves the series can go beyond formula to tell stories that disturb, move, and linger. There’s even a thread of foreshadowing in Reenie’s new hire , something that hints the series’ future may hold more personal dangers for Colter and his team.
In the end, “First Fire” burns bright, not just as a haunting procedural, but as a reminder that Tracker is evolving into something far more layered and ambitious than its premise first suggested.
This episode proves the series can go beyond formula to tell stories that disturb, move, and linger. There’s even a thread of foreshadowing in Reenie’s new hire , something that hints the series’ future may hold more personal dangers for Colter and his team.
In the end, “First Fire” burns bright, not just as a haunting procedural, but as a reminder that Tracker is evolving into something far more layered and ambitious than its premise first suggested.
