Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for High Potential Season 2 Episode 3.The Game Maker (David Giuntoli) may have been High Potential‘s most intense villain yet, but as of the two-part Season 2 premiere, he’s been defeated for now. With the Game Maker out of the way, High Potential is back to its case-of-the-week structure for the third episode of Season 2, “Eleven Minutes.” The episode sees Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) and her team investigate the murder of Nathan Gould, a man who is strangled to death while waiting at a restaurant to meet with his daughter.
Meanwhile, the Season 2 premiere only brought more questions about Roman Sinquerra’s whereabouts, and Morgan has to deal with the difficult decision in this episode of whether to tell Ava (Amirah J) that her father had recently been staying at a motel in Nevada. The return to form is naturally less suspenseful than the previous two episodes, but “Eleven Minutes” is nonetheless a strong installment that ends with a shocking twist.
In ‘High Potential’ Season 2, Episode 3, Morgan and Her Team Investigate the Murder of a Man in a Lot of Debt
After Nathan is murdered in this episode’s cold open, Morgan and Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) go to the crime scene to investigate. The paramedics who treated Nathan reveal that they treated him a lot for “suspicious injuries.” Morgan figures out that the tables were intentionally spilled on and set up so that Nathan would be sitting in the right place. The restaurant’s host then tells Morgan that she heard a duck sound in the alley after Nathan disappeared, which is how she found him. From investigating Nathan’s apartment, Morgan and Karadec figure out that he was a gambler in a lot of debt, and that one of the people he owed money – Nathan’s loan shark, Ray – came to kill him after he had already been murdered. Nathan also made Ray the beneficiary of his life insurance before he died.
This takes the Major Crimes team to the previous beneficiary: Nathan’s daughter, Jessica. Jessica explains that Nathan disappeared from her life after her parents divorced when she was a child. He reached out to her several months before to make things right because he’d be “going away soon,” and the two have been getting to know each other in the meantime. When Nathan was stood up on the morning he was killed, someone texted Nathan to change the location at the last minute, while Jessica was waiting for him where they’d agreed to meet. Morgan and Karadec then realize Nathan was planning to end his own life to give Ray his life insurance money and protect Jessica. Morgan also discovers that Jessica was pregnant, and Jessica tells Morgan that both she and Nathan had had a lot of doctor’s visits recently: her for the pregnancy, and him for a series of tests and scans with a cardiologist, even though he was fine.
In ‘High Potential’ Season 2, Episode 3, Morgan Tells Ava the Latest News About Roman
After her visit from Arthur (Mekhi Phifer) last episode, Morgan has been struggling with the weight of keeping the most recent updates about Roman’s whereabouts from Ava. After some well-meaning advice from Karadec, Morgan tells Ava everything that she knows about Roman’s latest whereabouts, including that he was living in Nevada a few weeks ago. Morgan then leaves for work, but later, she learns that Ava was arrested for vandalizing one of Roman’s murals. Morgan defends Ava, then she gets arrested alongside her, but Karadec quickly gets them released.
Later, Morgan and Ava talk, and Ava tells Morgan that she’s having a hard time after getting her hopes up that Roman hadn’t abandoned her after all. Morgan isn’t able to do much to reassure Ava, except tell her that she believes Roman had a good reason for disappearing for all these years, even though she knows as little as Ava does. Morgan still hasn’t reached out to Arthur about Roman, though, and the overarching mystery of Roman Sinquerra once again continues.
‘High Potential’ Season 2, Episode 3, Ends With a Shocking Plot Twist
Morgan figures out that Nathan’s phone alarm was set to the duck sound, and after interviewing the paramedics who treated him, she realizes that someone had planned it out so that Nathan would be found in time for his heart to be donated. As it turns out, Nathan Gould was killed for his heart, but the heart is now being redirected to a billionaire with sway over the hospital. The billionaire, Carson Wood, is not a great match for the heart, though the hospital coordinator threw away the paper with the original recipient’s name on it. Morgan and her team look through the waiting list for heart recipients, and Morgan figures out that the heart was attended for the mother of one of the paramedics, Christopher Bishop.
When Nathan was dealing with Ray’s threats and injuries, he got to know Christopher well, and he told him that he’d give Christopher’s mother his heart when he ended his life. When Nathan learned that he was going to be a grandfather, he changed his mind, and Christopher killed him for his heart. Morgan and Karadec let Christopher’s mother, Rosemary, see him and say goodbye to him one last time, then she goes back on the waiting list for another heart. Morgan gives Jessica the brooch that Nathan was planning to give to her baby, then Morgan asks her how she was able to forgive him and let him back in her life, to which Jessica says her mother raised her that way. “Eleven Minutes” then ends with Morgan considering Jessica’s words, and Karadec comforting Morgan by showing her who will be receiving Nathan’s heart.
New episodes of High Potential air Tuesdays at 10:00 P.M. EST on ABC.
