A well-dressed man is attacked as he waits for a special lunch date as ABC’s High Potential season two episode three opens. The café isn’t hidden away, but his table happens to be the closest to the alley.
(The following is a recap of season two episode three, which means there are spoilers ahead.)
Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) serves the kids toaster waffles while they discuss hiring someone to help Ludo out. She asks what they want out of a new helper, and Elliot wants to visit the morgue. Ava (Amirah J) just wants news about her dad, and Morgan promises to check in with Lt. Soto. (Morgan’s deliberately keeping Ava out of the loop until she finds out real information.)
Detective Oz Osman (Deniz Akdeniz) fills Morgan and Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) in on their new case. The victim is Nathan Gould and he was found by the café hostess behind the restaurant with a plastic bag taped around his head. Nothing was stolen and the EMTs were able to get a heartbeat back, but he’s unconscious. He might be brain dead.
An EMT reveals Nathan had a history of “suspicious injuries.” But he was a good guy and the EMTs hope they find out who did this. The hostess is shaken up but confirms he seemed nervous and excited to be meeting someone special. When she returned to the outside tables, he was gone but the pin he brought for this lunch date was still there.
Morgan looks around and deduces the other tables were deliberately left messy to make sure Nathan sat by the alley. The hostess seated him around 7:45am and found him in the alley after hearing ducks quacking.
Morgan didn’t see any signs of duck activity and doesn’t know what the hostess heard. (I’m guessing it was his cell phone’s ringtone.) His apartment indicates he was into sports, but they can’t figure out what team(s) he actually supported. Nathan has a stack of overdue bills, so apparently, he wasn’t a sports fan; he was a sports gambler. That would also explain his weird injuries. He wasn’t paying his bookie.
A man tries to break in as they’re still looking around. He attacks Adam and makes a run for it as Morgan calls Lt. Soto for backup. Soto doesn’t pick up, and Morgan notices the getaway driver outside. She calls down that the cops are coming and he drives off, leaving the perp without a ride. Adam tackles him and places him under arrest.
His name’s Marco DeLeon (Charlit Dae) and Adam thinks he and the getaway driver work for someone Nathan owed money. That person probably ordered the hit on Nathan this morning. Adam recovers a needle in his pocket, but nothing to inject and no weapons. Morgan thinks they’ve misjudged Marco.
Adam and Morgan meet with Marco’s boss, Ray, who doesn’t want to talk to cops. He’s got a crowded card room in the back of his barbershop, and Morgan points out every table has the same ultra-electric card shuffler. Before she can say more about the shufflers, Ray sends everyone out of the room. The shufflers allow the house to stack the odds.
Anyway, the syringe was empty, which meant Marco was going to inject air into Nathan’s bloodstream to kill him. If Ray ordered the earlier hit that should have killed Nathan, he wouldn’t have sent Marco over. Also, the air bubble death would have looked accidental and Ray, given his reputation, would have wanted it to look like a murder. Unless he could profit off Nathan’s natural death, which he would because Nathan made him the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.
Ray claims it was all Nathan’s idea.
Adam and Detective Daphne Forrester (Javicia Leslie) question Nathan’s daughter, Jessica, the previously named beneficiary of the life insurance policy. Jessica claims she had no idea he even had one. Her parents were divorced, and she wasn’t close to her dad. A few months back he reached out and told her he was going away. He wanted to make things right, so they’ve seen each other more in the last few months than when she was growing up.
Nathan had a ladybug pin with him when he was attacked. It turns out that was his nickname for her when she was a kid. Jessica’s tears are obviously genuine as she confirms she was supposed to meet him that morning, but he wasn’t there. She claims they were supposed to meet at a completely different location, not Dudley Market in Venice.
The team gathers, and Oz reveals Nathan hadn’t made any travel plans before he was attacked. They conclude he was going to kill himself, and that’s why he reconnected with his daughter, told her he was going away, and gave away his dog. So, why would someone kill a guy who was about to kill himself?
Adam and Morgan head to the hospital and learn Nathan is brain dead. Jessica’s with him and is shocked to learn he was planning to commit suicide. But that would explain him giving her his dog. She doesn’t know any of his friends or who he would have spoken with about his plans. Morgan has figured out that Jessica’s pregnant and Jessica says her dad was really excited about that. They bonded over doctor visits; he’d been seeing a cardiologist recently for scans. However, he said he was fine.
The following morning Morgan tells Ava about her dad possibly being alive in Nevada. Morgan shows her daughter Arthur’s card and explains she didn’t want to tell her earlier because she was afraid that she’d get her hopes up.
Over at the station, Daphne discovered an email to Nathan claiming to be his daughter changing their meeting location. Morgan looks at his alarm settings, and the ringtone is quacks. (I was right!) It was set for 8:00am, which indicates someone wanted Nathan’s body found at that time—late enough to be brain dead but not dead dead. Morgan believes he was killed for his heart.
Lt. Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) and Adam speak with the EMTs who picked up Nathan, asking about the timeline. After noting that someone just stole more of their albuterol, they confirm the call came in around 8:01am and they were on scene about five minutes later. Nathan’s heartbeat came back about three minutes later. Selena asks how long it would have taken for him to be brain dead and learns it would take 11 minutes.
Adam returns to the station and fills Morgan in on what they learned. She was right; Nathan was turned into an organ donor on purpose. Morgan now believes Nathan was in on it and that’s why he had his heart checked out with the cardiologist. However, when he found out he was going to be a grandfather, he changed his mind. The hired killer murdered him anyway because they needed his heart. They need to find out who his heart is going to. If they find them, they find the killer.
Morgan and Selena question the hospital’s transplant coordinator and she claims not to know who’s getting the heart, which is weird since that’s her job. Adam, Selena, and Morgan get the feeling something’s up because the transplant surgeon also seemed freaked out about the question. Someone powerful is making them stay quiet. The team has until tomorrow to find out where the heart’s going since Nathan’s organs will be removed then.
Morgan gets a call that Ava’s been arrested for vandalizing one of her father’s murals. Adam goes with her to the location and the owner of the building wants to press charges. Adam’s willing to smooth it over with the guy, but Morgan escalates the situation when the officer refuses to remove Ava’s cuffs. Morgan picks up the paintbrush and adds more paint to the mural … and to the officer’s uniform. She winds up taking a seat in lockup next to her daughter until Adam’s able to get them both released.
Later at home, Ava apologizes, and Morgan apologizes too. She didn’t consider the impact of dropping the info right before Ava went to school. Ava confesses that knowing her dad has been alive one state over this whole time is worse than anything she imagined. Morgan doesn’t know why he stayed away but she’s sure there’s a good reason.
Morgan has photos from Nathan’s case laid out on the coffee table and explains she’s looking for someone who needs a heart among the hospital’s largest donors. Ava thumbs through them and spots a photo of Hollywood producer Carson Wood posing at an old movie premiere. He’s been posting old photos and acting like they’re more recent, which means he hasn’t been seen in public in months. Carson could be hiding that he’s sick.
Morgan’s proud that her daughter figured this out.
Adam and Daphne pay a visit to Carson Wood as he’s being wheeled out by nurses. He’s hooked up to oxygen and looks close to death. Carson claims he’s never heard the name Nathan Gould and is on his way to get a heart transplant. Carson admits he might have pressured St. Clare Hospital to bump him to the top of the list, but the heart he’s receiving is in Utah. St. Clare doctors told him Nathan’s heart wasn’t a good match.
Morgan calls Adam and Daphne to report someone stole Nathan’s heart from the hospital. The hospital confirms everything went normal with the removal, and they packed it for transport. It was stolen after that. The heart can only be outside of the body for six hours before it’s no longer viable.
Someone who knew the procedure must have taken the heart. The team only has four hours left and Selena brings the transplant coordinator in for questioning. She claims not to have had a choice about bumping Carson Wood to the top of the list. It turns out Nathan directed his heart be given to someone, but the hospital committee invalidated his request to give it to Carson Wood. Unfortunately, she deleted the name of the original designated recipient and confesses she never even looked at it.
Adam and Morgan look at all the people on the recipient list who reside in the southwestern US. The heart only has two hours left and Morgan determines some of them live too far away. Others have the wrong blood type and people with the wrong body size are also out. That narrows it to just six, and Morgan thinks from the remaining possibilities she’s figured out who the killer is.
70-year-old Rosemary Caferri at Eaton General is the recipient. She’s the only one on albuterol, which is the drug the paramedics said was being stolen. Morgan discovered one of the paramedics, Christopher Bishop, is Rosemary’s son. Christopher and Nathan got to know each other because of Nathan’s injuries, and he must have offered to give his heart to Rosemary. When he changed his mind about killing himself, Christopher murdered him.
Adam alerts Eaton General about the situation. Morgan realizes this means Rosemary won’t get the heart.
Adam breaks the news about what Christopher did to his mom. Christopher’s already dropped off the heart at the hospital, but he returned when the hospital texted him that they needed him back as the next of kin. He’s currently in custody, but Adam allows Rosemary to see her son. Informed she’ll go back on the waiting list, Rosemary admits she doesn’t care about that anymore.
She gives her son a hug and they apologize to each other.
Later, Morgan gives Jessica the ladybug pin that her dad meant to give her. Jessica believes it’s for her baby. Morgan asks why Jessica let her dad back into her life, and Jessica says it’s the way her mom raised her.
Adam informs Morgan that a 17-year-old girl got the heart instead of Rosemary. It did not go to waste.
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 1 “Pawns” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 2 “Checkmate” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 4 “Behind the Music” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 5 “Content Warning” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 7 “The One That Got Away” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 8 “The One That Got Away Part 2” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 9 “Under the Rug” Recap
- High Potential Season 2 Episode 10 “Grounded” Recap
This post was last modified on January 20, 2026 11:04 pm