High Potential will answer some burning questions — but not all — during its upcoming season finale.
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Daniel Sunjata, who plays Karadec, teased how the hit ABC series wrapped up season 1.
“There will be some questions that are answered. There will be some itches that do get scratched for the audience,” he noted. “[But like] all good television, you always leave the audience wanting a little bit more so that they have something to come back to.”
High Potential will make sure viewers “have a reason to anticipate” season 2. Despite not being renewed (yet), High Potential became ABC’s most-watched series in six years after premiering in September.
The procedural follows a high-potential intellectual named Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) who teams up with the LAPD to help solve murders. She gets paired up with Karadec, who is initially skeptical about how Morgan can assist the Major Crimes unit but ultimately starts to rely on her.
“The secret sauce is Kaitlin Olson. The reason why this is not your father’s procedural is because of that light comedic element that is sprinkled throughout every episode. Morgan and Kaitlin’s performance has so very much to do with it,” Sunjata, 52, gushed to Us. “It’s a serious cop show and a serious procedural but there is this lightheartedness and quirkiness that Kaitlin brings to Morgan. That’s the thing that makes this show stand out from other procedurals that I’ve ever seen.”
Season 1 got Us invested not only in Morgan’s journey but Karadec’s as well. According to Sunjata, a possible second season of High Potential would build upon that by focusing on Karadec more outside of the police precinct.
“I think we’ll see more of that probably in — fingers crossed — season 2. We’ll dig more into that. There will be a peek behind the curtain in terms of Karadec outside of the workplace,” the actor shared. “What his life is like outside of the precinct. They’ll probably get more into that during season 2.”
While Karadec won’t be “that much different” at the end of the first season, there is still an onscreen shift.
“He has been changed in terms of [how] there’s more than one way to come to the right answer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be color by numbers. Intuition can play a part,” he said about how Karadec will come around to Morgan’s insight. “It’s not just the fact that Morgan can memorize a bunch of facts. She has this awe-inspiring ability to contextualize them and to glean meaning from these apparently disparate facts, which is something that the detectives are lacking.”
Sunjata continued: “At the end of this first season, Karadec will be far more open-minded in terms of how to go about solving cases. One thing that Karadec and Morgan definitely have in common is they both deeply care about justice. They both deeply care about protecting people who can’t protect themselves and writing what has been wronged. Karadec is more willing at the end of season 1 to use different solutions to problems than he was at the beginning. That would be due to Morgan’s influence for sure.”
Getting to star on High Potential has been a pleasant change for Sunjata.
“[With] procedural television, I look at it like a sandbox. A sandbox has borders and there’s a place where the sand exists, and then there’s a place where you are outside of the sandbox. But within that, you can build infinite sandcastles,” he explained to Us. “Finding freedom within the form of the genre is something that has been challenging for me. But for me as an actor, it’s the only way to keep it interesting for myself. To keep it alive is to constantly be trying to find new ways to [film scenes in the same space]. … Trying to find freedom within the form of the genre is something that has kept me on my toes and it keeps me excited coming to work every single day.”
High Potential is currently streaming in Hulu.
