With all talk of art thieves now behind them, Morgan and her team moved on to a new case in Tuesday’s episode of “High Potential,” one that struck a very personal nerve with our leading lady.
While reluctantly protecting the owner of a hazardous vacuum manufacturer, Morgan struggled to hide her resentment towards the callous CEO, earning a scathing response that reminded Morgan of another difficult man in her life — dear ol’ dad.
“All that intellect, wasted,” Mr. Neimeyer told her. “This chaos act you put on that you pretend is a choice, it’s all a cover for the fact that you can’t apply yourself even if you wanted to, because you lack self-discipline. It’s the real reason you’ve never accomplished anything, and you never will.” Ouch.
Even after cracking the case and exposing an inside job within the FBI (what a day!), Morgan remained rattled by her experience with Niemeyer. She’s determined not to become like her father, but his hurtful words still echo in her head. Leave it to Karadec to come through with the perfect pep talk: “If you need proof that the world’s a better place for you being in it, go home,” he told her.
Speaking of the homestead, after seeing that Rhys sent Morgan flowers, Elliott pushed Ludo to fight for his ex. (“The gauntlet’s been thrown! I can’t help you if you’re not even going to try.”) This prompted Ludo to sit Elliott down for a heart-to-heart chat in which he dashed the poor kid’s hope that his parents might get back together someday.
“We still like each other, and we still make a great team, and that is never going to change,” Ludo told Elliott. “But your mother and I realized we didn’t make a great couple. No one did anything wrong. We just move at very different speeds. And trying to be people we weren’t wasn’t good for either of us. We realized we work better as friends.”
TVLine spoke with “High Potential” showrunner Todd Harthan about this week’s biggest developments, from the impending introduction of Morgan’s father to the missing details from Ludo’s story. Read on for all of the fresh intel, then drop a comment with your thoughts on the hour. What are your hopes for the rest of the season?
Is there more to Morgan and Ludo’s story?
Sure, Ludo was refreshingly forthright while discussing his separation with Elliott, but we couldn’t help but wonder if Taran Killam’s character was merely giving the child-friendly version of his and Morgan’s falling out. And according to Todd Harthan, there is indeed more to the story.
“It is more complicated, but it was complicated with mutual respect and understanding, and that’s why their relationship post-breakup works so well,” Harthan tells TVLine. “Any breakup between people with two children is always going to be messy, but it was messy without ever being disrespectful or hurtful.”
And while Harthan acknowledges that Ludo gave Elliott an abridged version of the story, it felt appropriate for the situation: “Why give a young kid, especially one who’s already struggling with it, those kinds of details?”
“That’s stuff that might be interesting to unpack in an episode that’s less about Elliott’s point of view on what happened to his parents and why they’re not going to get to get back together, and more about something that complicates the Ludo-Morgan relationship down the way,” Harthan explains. “He’s not going to lie to his son, but he also doesn’t need to give him every detail.
Who broke things off, Morgan or Ludo?
Elliott did ask Ludo one question he wasn’t comfortable answering: Whose decision was it to end the relationship? And Ludo isn’t the only person struggling to come up with a response to that crucial query.
Todd Harthan tells TVLine that he and the “High Potential” writers have “talked about it a bunch of times, and it’s always been a spirited debate.” Yes, Harthan being the showrunner gives his vote a little more weight, but he insists that major story decisions like this are best left to a hive mind.
“I really do love to listen to all of the other wonderful writers and producers, and the studio and network,” Harthan says. “We all put our thoughts into the pod, and then I assess it and go, ‘Well, it’s not just about what I want, it’s what I think is most satisfying for the audience.’ The discipline of running a show like this is that even with episodes we pick and decisions like this, I don’t say, ‘I hear you all, but here’s what I’m going to do.'”
In other words, we don’t know who pulled the trigger on Morgan and Ludo’s relationship… because the show hasn’t decided yet. “I think it’s a question we’ll answer down the way, but I have my vote,” Harthan says.
Does Morgan’s father’s disapproval weigh on her more than she’s letting on?
To say that Morgan was triggered by Niemeyer’s judgmental personality would be an understatement. During his monologue about her “wasted” intellect, she might as well have been sitting with her father. Despite Morgan’s (mostly) stable exterior, there’s clearly some major insecurity below the surface — and all traumatic roads lead back to dad.
“It goes back to childhood,” Todd Harthan explains. “As tough, smart, and resilient as Morgan is, the judgment or disappointment of a father is something that always lives very close to the surface. It does for her. We talked about it a lot, and it’s not like, ‘Oh, I wish my father was more proud of me or approved of me.’ For Morgan, it’s disappointment that her father didn’t love her unconditionally. He didn’t let her carve her own path without a heavy hand or some dictation on what she should do with her life and her brilliance.”
Harthan describes Morgan’s dynamic with Niemeyer as a “little appetizer into how difficult the relationship is” between Morgan and her father.
When will High Potential introduce Morgan’s father?
That said, we will definitely be meeting Morgan’s father at some point in the future, Todd Harthan confirms.
“I don’t like to rush the introductions of like big characters, especially family members — mothers, fathers, brothers, all that wonderful stuff — until we know exactly what the character is,” the showrunner tells TVLine. “Then we can go get an amazing actor to play it because we’ve done our job building that character and relationship. The reason we haven’t introduced that character and delve too deep into it is because I want to make sure we get it right when we do it.”
Fortunately, it doesn’t sound like we’ll have to wait too long to meet the most fascinating (and potentially fearsome) branch of Morgan’s family tree.
“It’s in the incubator and we’re still figuring it out, but I definitely wanted to tease it with that Niemeyer character,” Harthan says.
Side characters will get the spotlight in 2026
Morgan has a lot on her plate at the moment, but it sounds like her co-workers at the LAPD are going to be pretty busy themselves as we roll into the second half of “High Potential” Season 2. According to Todd Harthan, the coming months will pull back the curtain on the other members of the bullpen — and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little worried by his tease.
“You’re going to get some Daphne, you’re gonna get some Oz, and we have something coming up with Karadec that’s going to ripple through the back half of the season,” Harthan tells TVLine. (That’s the worrisome part. When is “ripple” ever a good thing?) Good or bad, Harthan says, “We have 11 more of these [episodes] coming, and we start to spread the wealth a little bit with the rest of the cast.”
