Kaitlin Olson, High Potential
ABC
[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the High Potential Season 2 finale, “Family Tree.” Read at your own risk!]
Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) and Adam Karadec’s (Daniel Sunjata) lives will never be the same again on High Potential. In Tuesday’s season finale of the ABC procedural dramedy, the crime-fighting partners are both dealt devastating blows as the line blurred further between their respective personal and professional lives.
Directed by Alethea Jones (who also helmed the pilot) and co-written by showrunner Todd Harthan and Marc Halsey, the final chapter of the second season finds Morgan and Karadec investigating the death of a reality show home-improvement host at the swanky Los Angeles hotel where Karadec’s girlfriend Lucia (Susan Kelechi Watson) works as a guest relations manager.
Much to Karadec’s horror, the twisty investigation reveals that Lucia tipped off and then covered for the conman (played by How to Get Away With Murder’s Billy Brown) who committed the murder. After initially lashing out at Morgan — and even accusing her of micro-managing him like one of her three children — for suggesting that Lucia was involved in the criminal conspiracy, Karadec shows up at Morgan’s front door after Lucia’s arrest to apologize.
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A dejected Karadec, still in disbelief, confides in Morgan that he feels “so stupid” for not realizing the truth earlier, even going as far as to say that he is not sure if he ever really knew who Lucia was. Morgan reassures Karadec that he “did it right” by opening his heart and letting his ex back into his life. Without a second thought, Morgan pulls him into a hug and tells him, “It’s the same person. You just… you just loved her too much to see the things that you didn’t want to see. It’s OK.”
After a lingering hug, a tearful Morgan attempts to break the silence by inviting Karadec to her eldest daughter Ava’s (Amirah J) art show, to which Karadec says he “would love to” but has some things he needs to take care of first. Morgan reiterates that she will be there for Karadec if he needs her, and he proceeds to wipe a tear from her face — an intimate moment that, as Harthan tells TV Guide, was unscripted. (The Morgan-Karadec slow-burn romance is truly alive and well going into the show’s third season, which has already been ordered.)
Meanwhile, earlier in the episode, new LAPD captain Nick Wagner (Steve Howey) leverages the connections of his corrupt politician father Nick Sr. (Clancy Brown) to stage a meeting for him and Morgan with Willa Quinn (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the inscrutable political fixer connected to the disappearance of Morgan’s ex and Ava’s father, Roman, 15 years ago. After strong-arming Willa into revealing what she knows about Roman (and even rear-ending Willa’s car when she name-checked Morgan’s children), Morgan is horrified to learn that Roman was allegedly involved in the murder of undercover FBI field agent Lila Flynn, but she and her LAPD colleagues have now reached a point of no return into their search for her ex.
At the end of the finale, while attending Ava’s show on her own, Morgan receives a call from Wagner, who is driving to a public park to meet with someone else who could have information about Roman. But by the time she arrives to meet this unknown figure herself, Morgan finds only Wagner — who gave her the wrong meeting time on purpose — sitting at a picnic table and bleeding out from stab wounds all over his back. Having shared a steamy elevator kiss with Wagner at the end of the penultimate episode, Morgan is now forced to wrestle with the fact that her sedulous search for her ex has put her family and closest friends at the LAPD in harm’s way.
Below, executive producer Harthan breaks down what that cliffhanger means for Howey’s future on the show, the state of Morgan and Karadec’s partnership, and the new questions that have been raised about Roman.
Susan Kelechi Watson and Daniel Sunjata, High Potential
Disney/Christine Bartolucci
Let’s start with the Lucia of it all. When you first cast Susan Kelechi Watson as Karadec’s ex-fiancée, did you always know that Lucia was going to be involved in this criminal conspiracy with a conman? Why did you ultimately decide to go through with this heart-wrenching final twist?
Todd Harthan: When we invited Susan to join us, we had no idea how the season would end. We were just excited for Lucia to bring out sides of Karadec we hadn’t seen yet. Since we’d teased their past engagement, her return to his life felt like a way to unpack exactly what happened and raise the question: Could these two get it right if they had a second chance? Honestly, the criminal conspiracy just came out of conversations with Marc about how to make the Season 2 finale feel explosive in a way that felt different from how we ended Season 1 with The Game Maker. Sunjata is a brilliant actor who brings this amazing combination of strength and vulnerability, so watching him open up his heart to Lucia again only to have it broken — that felt shocking in a brand new way to us.
This seems pretty self-evident given Karadec’s moral compass, but just to confirm, is Karadec and Lucia’s relationship well and truly over?
Harthan: Given who Karadec is, it’s hard to imagine Lucia being able to come back from lying to him. But as you saw in their final hug once she’s arrested, he’s still trying to make sense of it, so… Who are we to say that door is closed?
You chose to juxtapose Karadec and Lucia’s hug at the precinct with Morgan hugging Wagner’s seemingly lifeless body after Morgan found Wagner with stab wounds in his back. First of all, how dare you leave us with that cliffhanger?!
Harthan: [Laughs.] Glad you enjoyed the cliffhanger.
On a more serious note, can you give voice to what is going through Morgan and Wagner’s heads in the final minutes of the season? Why does Wagner choose to meet this shadowy figure on his own?
Harthan: There’s a lot going on there for Morgan and Wagner. It made sense to us that Wagner wouldn’t let Morgan walk into any situation until he knew it was safe — and, ultimately, that proved to be the right call for him, given what happened. All our characters share this intense drive to get to the truth, and Wagner is certainly no exception, especially once he starts to suspect his father or Willa had a hand in burying it. Morgan pulls up to that park hopeful [that] she’s finally going to get answers — whether to confirm or refute what she just saw in that FBI file — but all that turns to grave concern for Wagner when she finds him. It’s probably not until later [that] she’ll start sitting with the questions raised by what happened in those last minutes of the season.
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Morgan’s biggest trigger will always be the threat of harm befalling any of her children. She goes into full protective mama bear mode to get Willa to reveal what happened to Roman, but then she discovers that Roman was allegedly involved in the murder of an FBI agent. How do you think this new revelation about Roman will reframe Morgan’s idea of who she thought he was going forward?
Harthan: Yeah, what Morgan learns about Roman in the file — that information from the FBI challenges not only what she’s believed for years about Roman, but what she’s been telling her daughter for years about who Ava’s father is. So I think Morgan’s going into next season with a lot of questions like, should they trust this FBI report from Willa? Is there more to what happened than even the FBI knows? But top of mind for her is going to be what all this means for her daughter because you’re right, protecting her children will always be her top priority.
You promised that viewers would get a lot more clarity about what makes Wagner tick and what kind of personal baggage he is carrying into his captaincy, and you certainly delivered on that promise in the final episodes of the season. Can the rest of the characters — and by extension the audience — really now trust that he is not on his father’s side?
Harthan: We love when our audience forms their own opinions, which sometimes means we leave things a little more open. That said, it was our intent to show that Wagner truly is on Morgan’s side. He’s earned her trust this season and I think we trust him too, especially after he puts it all on the line with his father and Willa. He’s not beholden to anyone but himself now. But Wagner is also a guy who’s kept us guessing since the moment he met Morgan in the elevator, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we pull back another unexpected layer on him one day.
Steve Howey and Kaitlin Olson, High Potential
ABC
So what can you say at this point about Wagner’s fate? Did your writers’ room come to a decision about whether he would survive, or will that be a question left for Season 3?
Harthan: We love Steve Howey and what he brought to the show for us this season. We left that question open. We have a few different ways we could see it playing out, so we’ll see.
Morgan and Karadec’s last scene in the finale is, personally speaking, my favorite scene of theirs this season. I noticed that it takes a couple of attempts for Morgan to get Karadec to drop his guard and open up about how he’s been dealing with Lucia’s arrest, and Morgan is finally able to break through that resistance when she calls him “Adam.” What was your and Marc’s approach to crafting that scene?
Harthan: Wow, that’s so great to hear – thank you! It’s certainly one of our favorites, and Kaitlin and Daniel were a huge part of dialing in that scene. Ultimately, I think what we wanted to say was that getting your heart broken doesn’t always mean you made a mistake. Karadec took a risk. It didn’t play out the way he hoped, and he’ll be changed forever as a result — but maybe with time, for the better? We all build these walls that don’t come down easy. Sometimes, it takes the people closest to us to make us feel safe enough to know we can. And maybe good things can result.
Was Karadec wiping Morgan’s tears away scripted? Did you toy with going any further than that?
Harthan: Oh, that was pure Kaitlin and Daniel magic, so we can’t take credit for that. I remember Marc was on set that day while I was away, and he actually texted me afterward about how moved he was by their performances. So I knew that if he was moved, our audience would be too. We never planned for it to go any further than Morgan finding the right words in this tough moment for him.
Finally, I asked Daniel Sunjata this question a little while back, and I’m curious to hear your take. At this point, do you think either Morgan or Karadec has caught feelings for each other? If so, are they aware of how they’re feeling?
Harthan: That’s a great question, Max. I think Morgan and Karadec are both aware that their relationship has deepened in this wonderful way and that they mean so much to each other. In last season’s finale, we saw a flicker of Karadec looking at Morgan a little differently, and we saw perhaps a flicker of Morgan seeing Karadec a little differently when things got serious for him with Lucia this year. So that dynamic continues to evolve for us. For now, I think their partnership is right where it should be — but we’re excited about where we take them next!
The full first two seasons of High Potential are now streaming on Hulu.