‘High Potential’ Season 2 Episode 6 Review: The ABC Series Is Setting Up a New Romance for Morgan — and I’m Worried About It
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for High Potential Season 2, Episode 6.One thing about me is I absolutely love Halloween episodes, and we are now in that time of year when network TV delivers its finest and spookiest. High Potential‘s first Halloween episode, titled “Chasing Ghosts,” sees the LAPD’s Major Crimes division working to solve the case of a wealthy man named Danny Sternblatt, who has seemingly been frightened to death by a ghost. While Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) investigates the case, she celebrates the holiday by keeping candy in her purse and encouraging Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) to embrace the Halloween spirit.
The Halloween aspects of this episode are fun, but I would’ve liked to see them ramped up beyond the case. Morgan has such a great sense of style, and it was a missed opportunity that we didn’t get to see her Halloween costume. The episode also further drags out the Roman mystery by not revealing the contents of the backpack until the end, but it’s a generally fun Halloween episode, and the case has some great twists.
In ‘High Potential’ Season 2, Episode 6, the Major Crimes Division Investigates a Spooky Case
The Major Crimes division initially believes Danny’s death to be a heart attack due to the scare of a ghost designed to look exactly like a famous actress named Maddie St. Croix, who’d died in the house about eighty years earlier. Morgan figures out that Danny had believed that his house was haunted, and that he’d been working with a spiritual advisor named Calliope to try to help him get rid of the ghost. Calliope tells Morgan and Karadec the specifics about the strange things that Danny had been hearing and seeing in the house, so they have a look around, where they find the person who was dressed as a ghost the night Danny died. Her name is Shauna Khurmi, and Danny’s estranged wife, Lorraine, hired her to haunt him for months.
Captain Wagner (Steve Howey) is back and as unsettling as ever this week. He insists on interviewing Shauna himself, and he tries to use this case to make himself look good to the department, so he’s way too harsh on her during the interrogation. Morgan and Karadec go to speak to Lorraine, and in spite of her recent messy split from Danny, they realize she’s innocent. Danny didn’t die from Lorraine’s haunting at all; instead, someone poisoned him. Morgan is on a roll this episode, and the next break in the case happens when she discovers that Danny’s house has a secret room. In the room are some of Maddie’s old things, including a necklace worth ten million dollars, for which Danny was killed. Morgan figures out that Calliope killed Danny for the necklace, so the Major Crimes team works together to expose her, and then they arrest her.
In ‘High Potential’ Season 2, Episode 6, Morgan and Ava Finally Look Inside Roman’s Backpack Together
As it turns out, Ava (Amirah J) has been refusing to speak to Morgan since their fight last week, and Morgan is too angry to meet her in the middle. They spend the episode at odds with each other, but at the end, they talk things out. Ava suggests that Morgan is angry at her younger self instead of Ava, stating that she is just like Morgan, but she does acknowledge that she worried Morgan when she disobeyed her and joined the meeting with Arthur (Mekhi Phifer).
After dragging the storyline out for another episode, the contents of Roman’s backpack are revealed at the very end… sort of. There are what looks to be a CD and a folder that we don’t get to see yet, and then there’s a drawing of Roman’s that proves he went to go see one of Ava’s dance recitals when she was very little. It is sweet, but it also makes me question Roman more, because if he was willing to take that big of a risk, he should have told Morgan he was alive.
‘High Potential’ Season 2, Episode 6 May Have Planted Another Clue About Captain Wagner
Captain Wagner continues to spend way too much time with Major Crimes this week, strengthening my theory from last week. He’s especially interested in Morgan’s relationship history, which could be just because he’s interested in her, but I still think he’s connected to what happened to Roman. Most interesting to me is the mention of Wagner’s fiancée, who passed away. He says it was a few years ago, but my growing theory has me wondering if he was engaged to FBI Agent Lila Flynn before she was killed fifteen years earlier. He might’ve played a reluctant part in her death to protect his family or himself in whatever cover-up Lila and Roman were trying to expose, or the mention of his fiancée is simply the show’s way of trying to add depth to his character (along with the photo of his very cute bulldog.)
This interaction also revealed that Morgan was never married to either Roman or Ludo (Taran Killam), which is a notable diversion from the French-Belgian version of the show that feels right for this version of Morgan. As a character, Morgan is deeply uncomfortable with commitment and has expressed her fear that her condition prevents her from being able to be a consistent and dedicated romantic partner. As of this episode, it’s pretty clear that High Potential is indeed setting the stage for a Morgan and Wagner romance, which will make things all the more interesting and explosive if he turns out to be a villain after all.
New episodes of High Potential air every Tuesday at 10:00 P.M. EST on ABC.
