Spoilers below for anyone who isn't yet all caught up with High Potential's midseason finale airing on ABC or streaming via Hulu subscription.
To be expected, High Potential wrapped the first part of Season 2 with a head-scratching mystery, a cryptic death, a potentially dangerous cliffhanger, and Morgan jumping up on a dude and making out with him against a wall. Wait, hold on, that last part was NOT expected, but I do like that she was free to get horned up outside of the office and away from any potential workplace love triangles, if only temporarily.
Outside of all that, the show's remaining overarching "Where is Roman?" mystery continued, with Ava still not believing her mom is doing everything in her power to learn more. So instead of being a trustworthy daughter who only JUST made nice again with Morgan after her diner trip caused much friction on the homefront, Ava went behind her back and personally reached out to Mekhi Phifer's Arthur. How dare!
Luckily, Arthur genuinely seems like a good guy, which makes the end of the episode all the more worrisome, with him being held at gunpoint inside his car by the dude the LAPD was looking for. When I talked to co-star Amirah J ahead of the finale, I hoped she would offer some comfort regarding Arthur's situation. When I asked if we could expect to see Ava and Arthur sharing the screen again, she was as hopeful as I was, saying:
Hopefully, a lot! We are not done filming Season 2, so we still have, I think, six episodes to film. So hopefully more is uncovered in those episodes. I would love to have more scenes with Mekhi. I think that'd be fun. But I also feel like they have to have some more scenes happening, just storyline-wise.
To that, I voiced that the producers wouldn't have brought in a talent like Mekhi Phifer just to have some random baddie take him out without any fanfare. That's ideally not how this show works. And to that, the actress agreed, saying:
Yeah. You don't just... [Laughs.] I think we can expect more scenes for Ava and Arthur. That'll be fun.
In the scheme of things, Arthur really hasn't shared that much with Morgan and Ava about his relationship with Roman, and hasn't given the best reasons why he isn't able to say more. I get that eyes might be watching from anywhere, and that Arthur is maintaining a normal private life that he doesn't want to get upended by whatever threatening entities are out there. But just tell us what we want to know, Mekhi! Er, I mean, Arthur!
Amirah J obviously couldn't share too much about what's to come after the 2025 TV schedule is over, and High Potential returns from its winter break, especially if the bulk of it hasn't been filmed yet. So we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that showrunner Todd Harthan knows the best move here.
The teen actress adored working with Mekhi Phifer, and is also quite fond of her relationship with Kaitlin Olson both on-screen and off. Which is a good thing, considering the show doesn't exactly spend time in Ava's orbit, and thus doesn't have any other younger characters to focus on. As it turns out, working on Shameless back in 2018-2019 helped set her up for that kind of on-set experience. In her words:
Well, on Shameless, it was kind of a similar thing where there weren't many kids on that show when I was working on it, and I was a lot younger, so I was mostly working with adults, pretty much. That's kind of how it is now too, being that me and Matthew are the only kids, I guess, on the show. But I think I like it this way. I like that I don't have to work with a bunch of kids. I don't know. I think it's fun, and I just feel like I'm learning a lot more by working with people older than me that have been in the business for so long.
To be sure, Amirah J said that for all that she likes learning from experienced adults around her, she's also quite fond of her younger co-star Matthew Lamb, and said they have a great bond when the cameras aren't rolling.
And I like that I get to be like a big sister to Matthew, because in my real life.,I'm the youngest one, and I'm the only girl, so having like a little brother is really fun to kind of play with. He's always on set showing me a bunch of, like, cool magic tricks and stuff, so we have a lot of fun together. But yeah, I feel like Shameless did teach me what working with adults would be like, and so I've just kind of always done that. So I think I like it more than working with kids.
Amusingly enough, she's not the only Shameless vet on High Potential, whose Steve Howey also co-starred in the Showtime hit. His character Nick Wagner's mustache was not safe for children, but he surprisingly got rid of it without warning, so we can go into the back half of Season 2 free from worries about THAT, if nothing else.
For now, we wait. High Potential will return to ABC with more Season 2 episodes at some point in the new year.
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