‘High Potential’ Boss Breaks Down Morgan and Karadec’s Candid Moment (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for High Potential Season 2 Episode 9, “Under the Rug.”]

High Potential‘s latest episode, “Under the Rug,” may have explored a crooked murder-for-hire plot involving a businessman played by Keith Carradine, but the installment also put Morgan’s (Kaitlin Olson) love life under a microscope, particularly when it comes to her son Elliott’s (Matthew Lamb) outlook, and her growing connection with partner Karadec (Daniel Sunjata).

The episode opens with Morgan receiving flowers from Rhys (Aiden Turner), the art dealer and moral criminal with whom she had a brief but steamy exchange in the past couple of episodes. While we don’t anticipate Rhys returning to screens, showrunner Todd Harthan says, “You never know in this wonderful High Potential world what’s going to happen.”

“Usually, any question anybody ever asks me about Morgan and Karadec or Morgan and Wagner, it’s hard to read into people’s motivations or what they’re thinking. And I love that. I like to keep the audience guessing,” Harthan continues about Morgan’s love life. “And I think in this respect, those flowers could mean so many different things. It could just be a simple thank you. It could be a, ‘Hey, thank you. Let’s do it again.’”

Disney / Bahareh Ritter

It’s because of all these different possibilities that Harthan is leaving the door open. “Those flowers could be a promise of a lot of different things. And that’s why we like the idea of planting that seed, not just for the Elliot story and to unpack things with Morgan and Ludo and their past, but to plant the seed of, is Rhys going to come back? And if he does, how and why?”

When Ludo (Taran Killam) addresses Elliott’s upset over Morgan’s flowers, the father and son determine that Morgan and Ludo are better off as coparents and nothing more, leaving the door open for other contenders. While Rhys may not have been present, Karadec’s continued care for Morgan was apparent throughout the episode.

In the installment’s closing scene, Karadec questions if Newmeyer reminded Morgan of her father, to which she admits he does, explaining that the man uses his intelligence as a weapon, which is something Morgan can’t do. She expresses concerns that she’s not living up to her potential like her father always accused her of, but Karadec is the voice of reason, pointing to Morgan’s family as proof that her method is anything but a waste.

“It’s such a personal and vulnerable thing for her to discuss that when it does come out, I think we want the audience to experience it,” Harthan says of Morgan’s candid moment with Karadec. “And it is something that’s on our radar that we will dramatize at some point. But if you really go back to the beginning of the show, you know very little about her mother and father,” he points out.

Harthan shares that “it’s insanely complicated and there’s some real trauma there, and I think we’re going to unpack it at some point in the relatively near future in the body of the show.” As for how well Karadec knows Morgan, Harthan notes, “I think Karadec only knows what the audience knows at this point. It’s very little, but he also knows not to push Morgan to disclose things if she’s not ready. He’s learned that about her. So it’s like let her do it at her own pace.”

Will he uncover more as Season 2 progresses? Tune in to find out, and let us know what you thought of the latest development in the comments section.

High Potential, Season 2, Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC