‘High Potential’ Boss Breaks Down Morgan’s Panic Attack and Comfort From Karadec Amid New Relationship (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for High Potential Season 2 Episode 12, “The Faust and the Furious.”]

High Potential‘s latest episode marked a turning point in Morgan’s (Kaitlin Olson) and Karadec’s (Daniel Sunjata) working relationship as the depth of their professional dynamic was pushed to an extreme.

While investigating a death, the duo found themselves trapped in a room where Morgan believed they might be subjected to a deadly gas, leading to an intense panic attack. Although she attempted to implement a visualization exercise to calm her frayed nerves, it was Karadec’s calming presence and physical embrace that managed to slow her frantic breathing down.

But for fans eager to explore the will-they-won’t-they dynamic may be waiting a little longer as Karadec’s former fiancée and current girlfriend, Lucia (Susan Kelechi Watson), grew more connected to him in the pivotal installment. Below, showrunner Todd Harthan answers our burning questions about the latest development in Morgan and Karadec’s working relationship, as well as what his relationship with Lucia means for them moving forward.

ABC

Morgan experiences a panic attack in this week’s episode. What was it like pushing Kaitlin to that point onscreen, and how does that shift Morgan and Karadec’s working relationship?

Todd Harthan: The good news is, when it comes to Kaitlin Olson, you don’t really have to push. She pushes herself pretty hard. So you script something like that, and she actually starts coming up with ideas to deepen it and make it even more complicated and visceral and emotional and all those things. So that scene continued to evolve once she got it and started to play with it. So it was really fun to watch, and she made it her own. And as it relates to their relationship, I’ve been saying this since we started doing this series together that I always saw this sort of unconditional partnership and friendship forming between the two of them.

They’re always there during the tougher times, the lower moments that they’re going to experience in a long-term partnership, and when it’s time for one of them to step up and be there for the other, they do without hesitation. This is a prime example of that. They continue to grow and get stronger and closer with each passing case. This case happened to bring them to the place where she started to worry that she may be living her last moment and not see her kids again. It’s one of my favorite scenes of the season; it’s a gem.

After the experience, there’s some awkwardness between them. Does that stem from Morgan’s embarrassment, her reaction to Karadec’s comforting, or is it something unspoken? 

ABC

Well, I think there’s a similarity in what they’re feeling. I think that once they know they’re going to be okay, he sees how vulnerable and exposed she is in that moment, and it’s like trying to figure out a way to comfort her on the B-side of such a traumatic moment. For her, it’s a bunch of different emotions floating through her brain. It’s being that raw and vulnerable in front of somebody else. She’s such a strong woman, so it’s like exposing herself in that way is a little bit unnerving. She tries to undercut it with a quip. They’re vulnerable in a very different way on the other side of this thing. It’s really hitting them in real time, just how close they’ve become and how much they mean to each other, and I think it rattles them both. Not in a bad way, but it’s something they’re both reconciling in that moment.

When Morgan does her visualization exercise, it’s her kids and Karadec that come to mind. What should we read from that?

It’s sort of a product of circumstance. She spends more time with him and her kids than anybody else, so they do populate those visions quite a bit, but it’s who lives in her brain most often. If we were being honest, I think that she’s thinking about her kids most waking moments when she can, and she’s not focused on other things. And I think that Karadec is a big part of her thoughts as well. So yeah, I don’t think that’s accidental or even all that surprising.

Karadec and Lucia reaffirm their reignited relationship in this episode, but we know one of the reasons it didn’t work out before was because of his commitment to work. Does having Morgan in the picture change Karadec’s point of view in that regard? 

He’s spending a lot of time with a new partner who really does have it all, as complicated and stressful as it is. This is a woman who’s out there helping him solve tough cases and still making it home to be a really good mother to three kids, and I think that it sort of opened his eyes to the possibility that maybe he can have the same thing. He was a little stubborn about it and unrealistic about the possibility of it before Morgan, but now I think she’s helped him evolve in a way.

That’s the irony of it, that the reason why he is so excited to open this door and let this woman from his past back in is because of his experience over this last year and a half or two years with this new woman in his life. So one has a heavy influence on the other. As we get into the back half of the season and Karadec’s relationship with Lucia continues to progress, we’re going to see whether that’s real or not, and if he really is ready to try to have everything now, he was so incapable of it the first time that they were in a relationship.

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