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‘The Walking Dead’ star bags bigger role in ‘Tracker’ Season 4 ahead of premiere

Justin Hartley's ‘Tracker’ Season 4 is scheduled to premiere on October 4

Cassady McClincy Zhang has bagged a bigger role at CBS. The actress, who portrays Mel on ‘Tracker,’ has been promoted to series regular for Season 4. Since appearing on the show last season as Reenie’s sharp new assistant, eager to prove herself on Colter’s cases, Zhang has joined Justin Hartley (Colter Shaw), Fiona Rene (Reenie) and Chris Lee (Randy) as a series regular, according to Deadline. Throughout Season 3, Mel evolved from an anxious new employee into a self-assured young woman who can hold her own on Colter’s sometimes-dangerous missions. She has taken on more responsibility, and it now appears that evolution is accelerating.

Zhang was previously a series regular on ‘The Walking Dead’ (as Lydia), ‘Castle Rock,’ and ‘Chicago Med,’ and also appeared in films like ‘Do Revenge,’ ‘The Snare,’ and ‘Love, Simon.’ The news of her becoming a series regular comes weeks ahead of the Season 4 premiere of ‘Tracker,’ which is set to return on Sunday, October 4 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. The first episode of the season is titled ‘Safe Harbor’ and is set to take Colter into a port-side case. 

Mel’s promotion comes just as the show gets more sinister. Season 3 concluded on the edge of the greatest mystery about the Shaw family. An investigation led Russell to discover that his father was involved in a secret government experiment involving gifted children. He then chose to keep this information from his brother, Colter. Though the show has long been driven by the relationship between Colter and his brother Russell, Reenie and her team have acted as the emotional core of the series, with Mel increasingly taking on greater responsibilities in the field. By bringing Zhang aboard as a series regular, ‘Tracker’ has given the actress and the character far more flexibility to evolve.

‘Tracker’ is based on Jeffrey Deaver’s bestselling novel ‘The Never Game.’ The series follows Colter Shaw, a lone-wolf survivalist, and each episode typically follows a self-contained case. Colter takes on a reward to find missing persons using his survivalist knowledge to track them down, uncover their secrets, and learn their stories. But the one overarching serialized mystery throughout the series follows Shaw’s search for the truth about his father Ashton’s death and the secrets kept from him by his family. While he mainly works alone, Colter has a small support network that assists him from his base of operations. Reenie owns the bail bond and investigation agency and has an assistant, Teddi, who helps her with research, while Randy works directly with Colter on most cases. Mel now joins the team as a series regular to help with the operations involved in solving the cases.