High Potential Returns Soon: Everything You Need to Know Before Season 2 Hits ABC & Hulu

Before Morgan jumps back into action, catch up on the wild cliffhangers, secret enemies, and the Roman mystery that's about to shake up everything in season 2.

High Potential is back on September 16, 2025, returning to ABC and Hulu after seven months off the air. If you loved season 1 (and clearly a lot of you did), you know this show has a knack for ending an episode right when you yell 'wait, what?!' So before season 2 drops, here is a clean, no-fuss refresher on where we left Morgan, who she is up against, and why the Roman mystery is about to blow open.

Quick refresher: what this show is and why it stuck

The series launched September 17, 2024 and became one of network TV's rare new procedurals that actually hums. Kaitlin Olson plays Morgan Gillory, a single mom with a scary-high IQ who gets pulled in as a consultant for the LAPD. She notices the stuff other people miss, and she weaponizes that brain to solve murders while juggling kids and rent and basic life chaos. The show comes from creator Drew Goddard and is adapted from the French/Belgian hit HPI. New episodes air on ABC and stream on Hulu.

The players you need to remember

• Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson): Genius mom, unlicensed detective energy, center of the storm.
• Selena Soto (Judy Reyes): Major Crimes Division boss who becomes Morgan's ally and gatekeeper.
• Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata): Morgan's partner; calm, methodical, and not shy about using his FBI contacts.
• Roman: Morgan's first husband, who vanished during a diaper run when their daughter was a newborn.
• Gio Conforth (Domenick Lombardozzi): Black-market broker with ties to Roman just before he disappeared.
• Lyla: An FBI agent Roman was working for; she died around the time Roman went missing.
• Oz (Deniz Akdeniz): Investigator on Selena's team who ends up targeted in the finale.
• David Peck (David Giuntoli): The kidnapper who turns the station's worst case into a twisted scavenger hunt.

Cliffhanger #1: the Roman case stops being a ghost story

Morgan only took the consulting gig on one condition: Selena had to dig into what really happened to Roman. He supposedly left one night to grab diapers and never came back. Morgan has never bought the idea that he bailed on his family. At first, Selena treats it like a long-shot favor. Then her digging turns up genuinely weird stuff: circumstances that do not line up with a simple disappearance, and hints that Roman might still be alive.

By the end of season 1, Karadec is all-in on the hunt too, pulling strings through his FBI contacts. The trail leads to Gio Conforth, a black-market middleman Selena identifies as someone who communicated with Roman around the time he vanished. Conforth had already told Morgan that Roman was working for Lyla, an FBI agent who died right when everything went sideways. Karadec pushes Conforth harder and finally gets a straight answer. Bottom line: Karadec thinks he knows where Roman is.

Cliffhanger #2: the game-playing kidnapper makes it personal

The season finale, 'Let's Play,' throws the precinct into a race-against-the-clock nightmare. Someone is abducting members of a grief counseling group, then taunting the police with puzzle clues to find them before the victims run out of air. When he nabs Oz, it hits home. The kidnapper expects the LAPD to lose his twisted little contest. He does not account for Morgan. Her pattern-cracking brain keeps beating his timers; no one dies on her watch. Oz is yanked out at the very last second, soaked and nearly drowned but alive.

Case closed? Not even close. The kidnapper is still out there, still leaving clues, still treating human life like a board game. After hours, Morgan is just being a mom, loading groceries with her kids in tow, when a friendly stranger helps pack her trunk. Nice guy, right? She gets home and finds a calling card: an actual card game planted in her trunk. That helpful bystander was the kidnapper, David Peck, hiding in plain sight.

Where that leaves us going into season 2

Two threads are burning at once. Morgan has basically made eye contact with the serial kidnapper who has been baiting her. At the same time, Karadec believes he has a lead on Roman's location after squeezing Conforth, with the shadow of Lyla's death still hanging over whatever Roman was caught up in. It is the kind of inside-baseball twist this show loves: an FBI connection, a dead handler, and a husband who might not be dead at all.

High Potential returns September 16, 2025 on ABC and Hulu. Catch up now on Hulu so you can roll straight from those double cliffhangers into the fallout.