Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched High Potential’s penultimate Season 2 episode on ABC, or streaming via Hulu subscription and Disney+ subscription, so be warned!
Somehow, science still isn’t on top of that whole “Kaitlin Olson hasn’t yet been cloned for the purposes of continuing to film High Potential alongside any other TV commitments” conundrum. As such, fans are once again set for a season finale that feels like it arrived too soon. At least the stakes are appropriately higher than last year, although I dunno how the show can truly top Season 1’s triple cliffhanger.
I’m guessing it’ll have something to do with the elevator-contained fireworks that sparked between Morgan and Wagner’s smooching lips, though. Which probably means some kind of a big next step for Karadec and Lucia as well. But all that can hold off, because I asked outgoing showrunner Todd Harthan for all the details about Kaitlin Olson and Steve Howey’s characters. When I inquired about whether there were conversations about having Morgan and Wagner reaching this point earlier in the season, Harthan shared:
Article continues belowYes and no. We always knew our Captain would take an immediate interest in Morgan, because how could he not, right? But we wanted his curiosity to initially come from what he'd heard about her, what she brings to this team, and how brilliant she is here.
Todd Harthan
Morgan is definitely a certain shade of dream-woman, and it’s a wonder that Oz hasn’t tried to go down that road yet. (Note: Oz should be forbidden-by-curse to ever even look at that road.) But it’s easy to see how a guy like Wagner could find his swagger staggered by an interest and intimidation related to Morgan.
Of course, this episode really made a meal out of putting Wagner on a main-character pedestal of sorts to justify why Morgan would then eagerly reciprocate that interest, even after his failed attempt to kiss her while sh-thoused. To that end, another reason the creative team didn’t jump more quickly into Morgan and Wagner’s romance is due to the actress and executive producer herself.
We really wanted to see where things went naturally between Morgan and Wagner and frankly, we also wanted a chance to see what felt right to Kaitlin, who’s always a huge part of those creative discussions, especially anytime we bring a guy into Morgan’s world. Our hope was that seeing things develop, with no one sure what to make of this new Captain--that it would take our audience on a more surprising, emotional journey. So we hope they enjoy it!
Todd Harthan
The showrunner previously talked to me about how much Olson digs into the scene-building and dialogue behind the scenes help keep the characters as realistic and relatable as can be. So I fully applaud her also having a voice when it comes to who her character is attracted to. Not all TV actresses have been so lucky, to say the very least.
Harthan also addressed the fact that holding off on advancing that thread made it easier to avoid any potentially problematic workplace romance issues, at least at a point where they were still all weird around each other. As he put it:
Look, professionally Captain Wagner is Morgan’s superior so we stayed pretty mindful of that in their interactions. We knew that if things were going to turn romantic, that Morgan needed to lead that in order for us to land things the right way. We also knew that if anything developed it probably wouldn’t happen until the end of the season because it would take time for them to figure each other out.
Todd Harthan
I'm 1000% on that same page. For one, if she'd made a move to lock lips with Wagner while he was still sporting his mustache, I might have recoiled hard enough to go backwards 0.25 seconds in time. Two, "Second Sunday" marked the biggest peek into Wagner's life, even if most of it was still on the professional side, and he was actually vulnerable and not just mildly creepy. So there wasn't that much for Morgan to latch onto, I'd think.
But stressful updates about Roman, combined with booze and a hectic shootout, make it easier to see how Morgan would seek out that kind of release, even if it didn't go any further than the elevator.
Todd Harthan did point out that he and writer/EP Marc Halsey purposefully wanted this update in Morgan's love life to stand out, saying:
We also wanted to make it feel very different from what happened so quickly between her and Rhys in 207. The truth is it probably was always going to take a different kind of episode for Morgan and Wagner to lean into each other — which is what Marc and I set out to do in 217.
Todd Harthan
I'm not even sure if I truly want to root for Morgan and Wagner to stay the course, but I don't have a whole lot of faith that it's going to happen, regardless of my own wishes. It's a little too early for anything permanent for either, with Wagner clearly still emotional about his own past. And if we get some kind of big Roman reveal in the finale, that'll only complicate things further. For now, though, they can both exist steamily together on the way to the parking garage.
High Potential's Season 2 finale is sadly almost here, with "Family Tree" set to air on ABC on Tuesday, April 7, at 9:00 p.m. ET. Be sure to watch to see how this potentially not-as-icky-as-I-thought love-line plays out. Season 3 is already set to return to ABC later in the 2026 TV schedule, so at least we won't need to worry about that.
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