[Warning: This story contains spoilers for High Potential Season 2, Episode 2, “Checkmate,” read at your own risk!]
Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson), the brilliant LAPD consultant at the center of ABC’s High Potential, may have just beaten the Game Maker, a.k.a. Matthew Clark (David Giuntoli), at his own game. But viewers should think twice before writing off the threat of the show’s first “serialized villain” for good.
“I love to get with the [writing] staff and go, ‘OK, let’s surprise the audience and keep them on their toes,'” showrunner and executive producer Todd Harthan told TV Guide. “So I wouldn’t necessarily say definitively that that storyline is wrapped up.”
At the end of the ABC crime drama’s first season, Morgan came to the chilling realization that the Game Maker — the astute serial kidnapper who kept toying with her and her team with piecemeal clues in the heart-racing finale — had come eerily close to her own family in a grocery store parking lot. Morgan immediately went into mama bear mode, forcing her children and her ex Ludo (Taran Killam) to stay home as much as possible and even getting a special police detail to watch her house at all times. But Morgan always knew that the only way to stop Matthew from targeting her would be to resume their twisted game of cat and mouse.
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In the second half of the two-part premiere, Morgan and her partner Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) looked for clues to connect Matthew to a string of unsolved crimes, even resorting to searching his very well-organized apartment — a search that he willingly agreed to — for a smoking gun, but they come up short. Midway through the episode, Morgan realizes that the only way she can beat her nemesis is if she is willing to lose to him, and without any backup, she shows up at his apartment unannounced to concede whatever game of chicken they are playing.
But that was just the first step in Morgan’s plan. On her way out of Matthew’s building, Morgan overhears the muted screams of Maya Price (Kate Miner), whom Matthew kidnapped to get her attention, in an apartment on another floor. Once the authorities were able to prevent Maya’s ex from killing the man that Matthew had framed for Maya’s kidnapping, Morgan shows up again at Matthew’s apartment later that night with some new dirt that she just dug up on him. Morgan confronts him about stealing Maya’s donated blood from a hospital to mislead authorities. To add insult to injury, she then brings up his late mother — who was accused and ultimately convicted of theft — and asks what she would have thought about her son not only stealing, but also harming another single mom.
Knowing that his ruse is up, Matthew tries to end his life in a blaze of glory by jumping off the balcony of his apartment — only for him to land in an air safety cushion before being taken into custody by Oz (Deniz Akdeniz), whom he kidnapped and nearly drowned at the end of last season.
Below, Harthan breaks down his approach to creating the Game Maker’s arc, how the arrival of a new precinct captain and the mystery surrounding Morgan’s ex Roman will drive the sophomore season, why Morgan could soon find herself at the center of multiple “soapy” romances — and how he is planning to develop the rest of the ensemble after largely focusing on the quirky protagonist for the first 15 episodes of the series.
The looming threat of the Game Maker was one of the most interesting storylines to come out of the Season 1 finale, so I was admittedly a little surprised that you chose to resolve that arc as quickly as you did. How did you think about crafting this two-part opening storyline, and why did you want to wrap up the Game Maker’s arc rather than playing it out?
Todd Harthan: When I signed up to do this show, I always knew that I wanted to introduce a serialized villain. We had to get our bearings first and get a pretty good handle on what we wanted to accomplish with it, because I didn’t want it to skew too terribly dark. I also wanted to try to separate ourselves from the pack of other shows that have done something similar. So it took a while to figure out what we wanted to do and how to walk a very delicate line tonally for our show. So once I felt like we had our arms around that, then I shifted into, “OK, well, how do we want to come out of the gates with an explosive and satisfying premiere to deliver on the promise of one of our cliffhangers from last year?” So a lot of thought and time and attention went into that particular storyline.
I will say this: Anything that you think is going to happen or you expect to happen on this particular show, I love to get with the staff and go, “OK, let’s surprise the audience and keep them on their toes.” So I wouldn’t necessarily say definitively that that storyline is wrapped up.
Morgan learns in this episode that Matthew had a single mother who was accused of stealing from her wealthy employer, and then she died in jail for a crime that he still believes she didn’t commit. Did you always know that he was going to target Morgan, in part, because she was also a single mother who could match him on an intellectual level?
Harthan: We had the seed of that, for sure. We knew that it was going to be tied back to something deeply personal, because what I didn’t want was for him to be just a naturally-born psychopath, if that makes sense. [I believed] through nature and nurture, something caused this evolution. So we knew that we wanted to go in that direction, but it took us time to put a finer point on it because we didn’t have the exact way in which we were going to catch him in a satisfying way. So we needed those two things to sync up. But, yeah, we did know that that was the direction we were going to be running.
The Game Maker’s arc — or at least what we’ve seen of it — ends with him trying to jump off his balcony to avoid criminal liability, but for the first time, Morgan and the rest of the LAPD were already one step ahead of him and knew he was likely to jump. Did you always know you wanted his arc to end that way?
Harthan: Well, I’d be lying if I said yes. [Laughs.] So much great stuff comes out of having an original plan and some ideas over the course of a hiatus. Then you get into a room with a bunch of great, creative writers and other brains that are firing on far more cylinders than mine is, and you end up upgrading some things that you thought were the best ideas.
So the short answer is, absolutely not. We probably had, I’m not kidding, at least eight or nine or maybe 10 other ways in which we were going to end this two-parter as it relates to the Game Maker and Matthew Clark. But it is just one of those things where we just kept topping ourselves. Just like with everything else in this show, I think I have my arms around what we’re going to do creatively, and then someone comes in and beats that idea, and the ground underneath our feet shifts. So part of it is just going with instincts and going, “Yep, that’s better,” and holding our ideas a little bit looser than I normally do because I’m finding that there’s a better one around the corner.
In the other cliffhanger from the finale, Morgan learned from Karadec that her ex Roman is still alive. Oz and Daphne (Javicia Leslie) try to investigate that lead in the finale, and they track down a man named Arthur, played by Mekhi Phifer, who checked into a motel under Roman’s name. Viewers still don’t know how Arthur and Roman are connected, but how are you planning to push that storyline forward this season?
Harthan: Look, we’re going to push it forward aggressively. Last year, it was the appetizer, right? We were just feeding in some things to get the audience excited and invested in that storyline. And this year, it’s really about delivering on that promise and filling in some major blanks. I think if we tread water for too long, it’s the wrong kind of audience frustration. I love to frustrate the audience and not give them too much of what they want too soon. But at the same time, I think we have to introduce some characters and fill in some of those major holes for Morgan and Ava so that we can have real story momentum in that serialized thread.
So adding Mekhi — by the way, just to get an actor of that level to come in and play this part was incredible. He and Kaitlin are incredible together, [just like] he is with Amirah [J] who plays Ava. But he’s a big part of the first batch of episodes this season. He has a lot of agency in some of the things we learn about Roman. So, yeah, we’re not treading water this season; we’re filling in some blanks — and some explosive things are coming.
How are you going to use the Roman storyline to create more conflict within the rest of Morgan’s biological family?
Harthan: I think one of the things we’re exploring is the ways in which Ava is like her mother and not like her mother. And in that push and pull of getting answers that they both so desperately want, [we wanted to show] that a young woman really wants those answers and how driven she is to get those as quickly as possible. Morgan knows, having worked with the cops now for a year or whatever the timeline is, that things don’t happen that quickly, especially in the world of a cold case. So you’re going to get some conflict in a young woman who wants answers about her missing father and not getting them on the timeline that she desperately wants, and that’s going to yield some real friction and some explosive storylines between mother and daughter.
Steve Howey will debut in Episode 4 as Nick Wagner, the new captain of the precinct. How will Captain Wagner’s arrival shake things up in the precinct? How will he disrupt the existing relationships between the core group of characters?
Harthan: The thing that I love so much about the conceit of the character is he doesn’t come in as a traditional captain, like, “Ooh, I’m going to have friction with everybody, especially the unorthodox consultant,” which is exactly what people would expect. But what if he was instantly drawn to and intrigued by this unicorn? How would that disrupt things inside the precinct?
Steve has been great, in that we really wanted to cast somebody that had all kinds of range that could play this enigma. He really is, in a lot of ways, this shadowy figure with a very hazy past that you can’t really put your finger on who he is, what he is, what his agenda is. That’s going to yield a lot of tension and ask good questions, which is what we always want to do in this show, and create some interpersonal dynamics that give the bullpen a fresh approach.
We don’t want to slip into repetitiveness ever, but especially in Season 2, [we were] like, who can we drop in here? That’s a very interesting character that’s going to just disrupt things in an interesting way, that doesn’t feel like a trope or doesn’t feel derivative. His chemistry with the cast has been fantastic, and we’re just writing some really fun things for him.
The last time we spoke, you were telling me that you are the kind of writer who is notorious for playing out romantic relationships. You like a good slow burn! Morgan obviously has a lot of chemistry with Karadec, but he is just one of her potential love interests. There’s always Ludo, her most recent ex and the father of two of her children. There’s Nick, with whom Morgan has some immediate, witty repartée. And, if Roman comes back into the picture, then who knows what will happen? How are you thinking about approaching Morgan’s love life this season?
Harthan: You’re right — I do like to slow play things to a certain extent, but what I fell in love with was giving Morgan options in Season 2. If she looks to her right, her left, behind her, or in front of her, she’s got options, and they’re all interesting and complicated for different reasons. For us in the writer’s room, that’s fun to write to. I think some of the near misses and explosive things that start to happen over the course of this season, and who those interactions and entanglements happen with, are going to surprise people. I want to feed the audience a satisfying amount of soap and brand of soap this season, and we’re a thousand percent going to do that. In fact, the episodes we’re writing and going to produce now are checking a lot of those boxes in a delicious way. So yeah, it’s a soapy season, I’ll tell you that.
During the first season, Morgan had a brief flirtation with Tom (JD Pardo), who chose to leave his janitorial job at the LAPD to go to nursing school in San Diego. JD was recently cast as a series regular on Netflix’s Trinity, but will Tom be back this season?
Harthan: Never say never on Tom. We talk about him a lot. It’s very possible, and we’re in the throes right now. It’s funny because we’re only in, writers’ room-wise, the middle of the season as far as breaking and scripting episodes. So there’s still a lot that’s discussed, and that’s certainly on the list.
High Potential was such a massive hit during its first season, but one of the common critiques was that the show didn’t spend nearly enough time fleshing out the rest of the ensemble. You even admitted to me at the end of last season that you were adamant about fixing those issues in the second season.
Harthan: Look, it’s one of the things that sort of gnawed at me last season. I’m not big on making excuses, but we have this amazing ensemble and they’re all incredible and versatile. I had to pay the tab on a couple of things in the way that we ended Season 1 in the first batch of [new] episodes. But we are right now graduating into some heavy Soto [Judy Reyes] and Daphne episodes. We’ve been talking about the Oz episodes.
Frankly, and I’ll take the hit for this — in many ways, it’s taken me too long [to explore the other characters]. But getting my arms around this particular show and the limited amount of real estate I have, when I did start digging deeper into the layers of these other characters, I wanted to get it right. I didn’t want to feel rushed. I didn’t want it to feel derivative. I wanted it to be worth the weight. So we are getting into it. It’s taken us a minute, but the audience is going to learn more about the other wonderful characters this season.
Can you elaborate on how you are planning to develop the rest of the ensemble this season?
Harthan: I’ll start with Soto, because that’s the big one we’re doing next. It’s [about] how this ticking bomb between her and the new captain goes off, and when that bomb goes off, [we’ll] learn about her and her past — how she got as a woman of color into that chair as a lieutenant; the things she survived to get there; and what she’s willing to do to protect not just herself but her own team when they’re in the line of fire or they’re being unfairly attacked; what she’s willing to risk to protect her team and her squad. So we’re digging deep into that in an episode that we’re doing right now.
And then the one a couple [episodes] down the way from that, we’re going to dig into Daphne’s backstory. Somebody very important from her past comes in, and it’s tied to a case. It’s going to be very emotional and powerful. And through that case, through that personal connection, we’re going to start to unpack some of the layers of who she is — not just as a detective, but as a woman, and all the things that come along with a complicated storyline. We’ve done it with Morgan and with Karadec to a certain extent, but we’re going to do it now with her. So those are the two that are coming most recently. And then we’ll get to Oz!
High Potential airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on ABC. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu.
