CBS’s Sunday One-Two Punch: ‘Tracker’ Season 4 and ‘Marshals’ Season 2 Both Premiere Tonight

Sunday, October 4, 2026 — Clear your Sunday night. CBS is stacking its two biggest dramas back to back tonight: Marshals Season 2 premieres at 8:30 p.m. ET, and Tracker Season 4 follows at 9:30 p.m. ET. One has TV’s favorite lone wolf hunting a missing father at the Port of Los Angeles; the other has Kayce Dutton going rogue to save his son. Here is the full briefing on both.

Tracker: “Safe Harbor”

Season 4 premieres tonight at 9:30 p.m. ET on CBS (9 p.m. PT on the West Coast) — a half-hour later than usual, because the Sunday lineup is shifted back for premiere night. The episode, titled “Safe Harbor,” was written by Alex Katnelson & Annakate Chappell and directed by Joel Novoa. It follows Colter Shaw as he searches for a teenager’s missing father — a case that pulls him into a dangerous criminal operation at the Port of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Reenie is reminded of someone from her past, a thread that promises to matter beyond tonight.

Paramount+ Premium subscribers can stream the episode live as it airs on CBS; Paramount+ Essential subscribers can watch it on demand the next day, Oct. 5. New episodes air weekly, and the show moves into its regular 9 p.m. ET/PT slot starting Oct. 11.

The Shaw family conspiracy takes over

If Season 3 was about the case of the week, Season 4 is about the case Colter can’t close: his own family. The third season concluded in May having deepened the mystery surrounding Colter and the Shaws, and the new season leans harder into the serialized throughline — the central question being what Colter’s brother Russell is withholding, and why. It’s the rare network drama willing to let its mythology do the heavy lifting, and it’s the reason the show’s most devoted viewers spent the summer theorizing.

Back for the new season: Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw, Fiona Rene as Reenie Greene, Chris Lee as Randy and Cassady McClincy Zhang as Melanie “Mel” Day.

How Tracker became TV’s No. 1 drama

Paramount+ bills Tracker as “the No. 1 show,” and the numbers have backed up the swagger. The CBS original stars Hartley as Colter Shaw, a lone-wolf survivalist and reward-seeker who travels the country finding missing people for money — based on Jeffery Deaver’s novel The Never Game. The formula sounds old-fashioned; the execution isn’t. Each episode is a self-contained investigation with genuine stakes, and Hartley’s easy authority has made Colter one of broadcast TV’s few genuine star vehicles.

One notable change this season: production has moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles, a homecoming for the series that opens up a wider range of environments for Colter’s cases — starting, fittingly, at the Port of Los Angeles in tonight’s premiere.

Marshals: “All Hat No Cattle”

The night starts at 8:30 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT with the Season 2 premiere of Marshals, the Yellowstone spinoff starring Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton — now a U.S. Marshal. The premiere, titled “All Hat No Cattle,” picks up right where Season 1 ended. According to USA Today, Kayce realizes his son Tate (Brecken Merrill) has been taken hostage and “goes rogue in a desperate race to save his son.” Meanwhile, according to the episode logline, the marshals “uncover a powerful criminal operation tied to the East Camp land grab,” and “a violent showdown ensues, putting everything Kayce cares about at risk.” (our premiere preview)

The returning cast: Grimes, Logan Marshall-Green as Pete Calvin, Arielle Kebbel as Belle Skinner, Ash Santos as Andrea Cruz, Tatanka Means as Miles Kittle, Merrill as Tate Dutton, Gil Birmingham as Thomas Rainwater, Mo Brings Plenty as Mo, Jefferson White as Jimmy Hurdstrom and Ellyn Jameson as Dolly Weaver.

The Yellowstone effect

Marshals follows Kayce as he bids goodbye to the family ranch and joins an elite unit of U.S. Marshals, “combining his skills as a cowboy and Navy SEAL to bring range justice to Montana,” CBS said in its series description. The bet has paid off enormously: Paramount+ says the series averaged 20.4 million multiplatform viewers across the first eight episodes of Season 1 — a monster number that explains why CBS has built its entire Sunday night around it. (CBS’s full fall lineup)

The Yellowstone universe remains the most reliable hit factory in television, and Marshals has inherited the mothership’s audience without simply cloning it — trading ranch politics for a federal-lawman procedural with the same big-sky moral code.

How to watch tonight

Marshals at 8:30 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT, Tracker at 9:30 p.m. ET / 9 p.m. PT — both on the CBS Television Network, both streaming live on Paramount+ for Premium subscribers and on demand the next day for Essential. Starting Oct. 11, the block settles into its regular rhythm: Marshals at 8 p.m., Tracker at 9 p.m. ET/PT, every Sunday. And if your queue still has room after that, it’s a stacked month elsewhere too — all eight episodes of The Diplomat Season 4 drop Oct. 15, and here’s what to expect from Reacher Season 4.