Even though High Potential is still off the air for a spring mini-break, the ABC dramedy will finally be back on our TVs in the nearish future, presumably (or at least hopefully) for another uninterrupted streak until the Season 2 finale. Fans are no doubt hoping to see more development between Morgan and Karadec, and I’m slowly finding my way over to that opinion myself. But have I totally gotten over the all-too-quick exit from JD Pardo’s Tom in Season 1? Not exactly.
Despite having genuine chemistry together, Morgan and Tom’s would-be romance was thwarted first by Morgan’s inability to separate her work life and private life, and was then fully upended when Pardo had to bow out of High Potential altogether for another project. That disappointing turn of events was made even more heartbreaking when showrunner Todd Harthan told me there were indeed further plans for these star-crossed characters.
Harthan talked to CinemaBlend about the back half of Season 2, and when I expressed my prior desire to see Kaitlin Olson’s brainiac with Pardo’s soft-spoken and interested nurse-in-training, the showrunner confirmed there were multiple ideas for how to bring him back into Morgan’s orbit. (Morbit?) In his words:
Yeah, we did have a few different versions of him coming back. There was one in the front half, and then one in the very top of the back half.
In my idealized reality, each of those versions played out in full on the show, and Tom and Morgan are totally vibing together and she doesn't have any nagging issues regarding obsessing about murder cases while trying to be flirty. It's a good place to hang out, even if it's not real.
In any case, the Mayans MC vet landed himself a key role in the upcoming Netflix TV series Trinity, which likely played a big part in taking him out of the running to keep wooing female characters on other TV shows. (And just this month, he also landed a role in the new spinoff Bosch: Start of Watch.) Todd Harthan spoke to the scheduling issues being a factor, while still holding out for a "one day" scenario, saying:
You know, it's one of those things that we have, our dream list of things we want to accomplish, and sometimes we have other stories that that push it off the board. In JD's case, I think it did become an availability issue - he's a busy guy. But yeah, we had a couple of interesting, cool ideas that came down. That's not to say they can't go back up, but in the front half, they ended up dissolving away.
When I said that I felt comfortable keeping my fingers crossed for Tom's return, the showrunner hyped me up that much more by saying:
Well, wishes do come true, buddy. You just hang in there.
Even if it almost definitely won't be happening before Season 2 wraps its run on the 2026 TV schedule, JD Pardo's return as Tom is technically still a possibility. As is the scenario where Tom and Karadec would have to throw down in some kind of a cage match outside the LAPD offices in order to win Morgan's affection. That one only exists in the aforementioned idealized reality, but it's a fun one.
High Potential Season 2 will return to ABC on Tuesday, March 3, at 9:00 p.m., with new episodes streaming the next day via Hulu subscription.
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