High Potential Showrunner Gave Me The Low Down On Setting Up Morgan And Wagner’s Kiss, And How Kaitlin Olson Factored In
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Credit: ABC
Spoilers beneath for anybody who hasn’t but watched High Potential‘s penultimate Season 2 episode on ABC, or streaming by way of Hulu subscription and Disney+ subscriptionso be warned!
Somehow, science nonetheless is not on high of that entire “Kaitlin Olson hasn’t but been cloned for the needs of constant to movie High Potential alongside another TV commitments” conundrum. As such, followers are as soon as once more set for a season finale that feels prefer it arrived too quickly. At least the stakes are appropriately larger than final 12 months, though I do not understand how the present can really high Season 1’s triple cliffhanger.
I’m guessing it’s going to have one thing to do with the elevator-contained fireworks that sparked between Morgan and Wagner’s smooching lipsalthough. Which most likely means some form of an enormous subsequent step for Karadec and Lucia as nicely. But all that may maintain off, as a result of I requested outgoing showrunner Todd Harthan for all the small print about Kaitlin Olson and Steve Howey’s characters. When I inquired about whether or not there have been conversations about having Morgan and Wagner reaching this level earlier within the season, Harthan shared:
Yes and no. We always knew our Captain would take an immediate interest in Morgan, because how could he not, right? But we wanted his curiosity to initially come from what he’d heard about her, what she brings to this team, and how brilliant she is here.
Todd Harthan
Morgan is definitely a certain shade of dream-woman, and it’s a wonder that Oz hasn’t tried to go down that road yet. (Note: Oz should be forbidden-by-curse to ever even look at that road.) But it’s easy to see how a guy like Wagner could find his swagger staggered by an interest and intimidation related to Morgan.
Credit: ABC
Of course, this episode really made a meal out of putting Wagner on a main-character pedestal of sorts to justify why Morgan would then eagerly reciprocate that interest, even after his failed attempt to kiss her while sh-thoused. To that end, another reason the creative team didn’t jump more quickly into Morgan and Wagner’s romance is due to the actress and executive producer herself.
We really wanted to see where things went naturally between Morgan and Wagner and frankly, we also wanted a chance to see what felt right to Kaitlin, who’s always a huge part of those creative discussions, especially anytime we bring a guy into Morgan’s world. Our hope was that seeing things develop, with no one sure what to make of this new Captain–that it would take our audience on a more surprising, emotional journey. So we hope they enjoy it!
Todd Harthan
The showrunner beforehand talked to me about how much Olson digs into the scene-building and dialogue behind the scenes assist hold the characters as practical and relatable as they are often. So I absolutely applaud her additionally having a voice in terms of who her character is drawn to. Not all TV actresses have been so fortunate, to say the very least.
Harthan also addressed the fact that holding off on advancing that thread made it easier to avoid any potentially problematic workplace romance issues, at least at a point where they were still all weird around each other. This is how I put it:
Look, professionally Captain Wagner is Morgan’s superior so we stayed pretty mindful of that in their interactions. We knew that if things were going to turn romantic, that Morgan needed to lead that in order for us to land things the right way. We also knew that if anything developed it probably wouldn’t happen until the end of the season because it would take time for them to figure each other out.
Todd Harthan
I’m 1000% on that same page. For one, if she’d made a move to lock lips with Wagner while he was still sporting his mustache, I might have collected hard enough to go backwards 0.25 seconds in time. Two, “Second Sunday” marked the biggest peek into Wagner’s life, even if most of it was still on the professional side, and he was actually vulnerable and not just mildly creepy. So there wasn’t that much for Morgan to latch onto, I’d think.
Credit: ABC
But stressful updates about Roman, combined with booze and a hectic shootout, make it easier to see how Morgan would seek out that kind of release, even if it didn’t go any further than the elevator.
Todd Harthan did point out that he and writer/EP Marc Halsey purposefully wanted this update in Morgan’s love life to stand out, saying:
We also wanted to make it feel very different from what happened so quickly between her and Rhys in 207. The truth is it was probably always going to take a different kind of episode for Morgan and Wagner to read into each other — which is what Marc and I set out to do in 217.
Todd Harthan
I’m not even sure if I truly want to root for Morgan and Wagner to stay the course, but I don’t have a whole lot of faith that it’s going to happen, regardless of my own wishes. It’s a little too early for anything permanent for either, with Wagner clearly still emotional about his own past. And if we get some kind of big Roman reveal in the finale, that’ll only complicate things further. For now, though, they can both exist steamily together on the way to the parking garage.
High Potential‘s Season 2 finale is sadly almost here, with “Family Tree” set to air on ABC on Tuesday, April 7, at 9:00 pm ET. Be positive to observe to see how this probably not-as-icky-as-I-thought love-line performs out. Season 3 is already set to return to ABC later within the 2026 TV scheduleso at the least we cannot want to fret about that.
