Colter is sent to new York to help Logan (Oliver Rice), find his wife Clare (Alvina August). She disappeared from a locked room but as Colter dives in, he finds that this case is much bigger than he expected

Tracker continues to make some fun genre changes and this episode is possibly the best one so far. The moment Colter find almost everyone at Clare’s job dead, and hides from the cleaners (Brahm Taylor and Michael Adamthwaite doing excellent, memorable hench work) you and he both know we’re through the looking glass. It’s a great moment, knocking him and the show and you off kilter.

It also does a great job of answering its own questions and like a lot of the best episodes of the show delves into a world we don’t normally see. The show’s dabbled with espionage before, but here it goes all in and it’s all the better for it. Hartley’s Colter is reactive throughout the episode, his endless competency knocked sideways by being dropped into a very different theatre. Randy, Reenie and Velma all step up neatly to cover him. There’s a real urgency to the episode as solutions are thrown together on the fly and Chris Lee’s Randy especially gets some real fun chances to show their skills off. Colter may be out of his depth but his team aren’t, and the ‘scrappy amateurs versus spies’ tone is enormous fun. I’ve seen some fans complain we didn’t get a name check or guest appearance by Jensen Ackles’ Russell given his knowledge of this field but honestly you don’t feel his absence. Especially given how fast events move.

The supporting cast are typically great too. Lee’s Randy gets some especially fun spy hacking to do but the standout here, for once, is the victim. Alvina August’s Clare is great and the backstory for her and husband Logan feels like a brief glimpse into another longform story. Gabrielle Rose excels too as one of their contacts, rounding out a very strong cast for a very strong episode.

This really is a good time and the writers’ room may know it. There’s a hint here that Colter has got the attention of the intelligence community and we may be back here again. I hope so, because this was a blast.

Verdict: Tracker continues to play with tone and format and it continues to payoff. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart