TV Recap: "High Potential" — A Pie, a Sprinter, and a Space Agency Secret
When a beloved astronaut collapses in a hotel lobby after a seemingly absurd attack, Morgan finds herself chasing a case that reaches from a college track team all the way to the edges of the space program. Meanwhile, Soto's pursuit of Willa Quinn takes her to New York — only to discover that Willa may have been one step ahead the whole time. Here is a recap of this week's episode of High Potential.
Season 2, Episode 15: “Pie in the Sky” – Written by Eric L. Lu
Theodore “Teddy” Barrow (Travis Schuldt) moves through a hotel lobby like the celebrity he is—a decorated astronaut stopping to sign autographs and pose for photos with a starstruck little girl named Joanna (Ember Ambrose) who dreams of going to space one day. His fiancée, Heidi Choi (Catherine Haena Kim), is anxious about the time; Teddy’s hand trembles slightly as they walk, and he admits he’s nervous about the keynote speech he’s about to deliver at the Biltmore Hotel. She takes his hand. Then, without warning, a figure sprints past and drives a pie straight into Teddy’s face. He coughs, chokes, and collapses. Heidi screams for help.
Back at LAPD, Selena Soto (Judy Reyes) is headed to New York City to track down Willa Quinn (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in person—every other approach has hit a wall. Morgan wants in; both Soto and Karadec shut that down, noting the risk. Captain Nick Wagner (Steve Howey) strides in, already surprisingly up to speed on the case, asking only that they keep him posted. He redirects the team: Teddy Barrow has been murdered at the Biltmore. Oz (Dennis Akdeniz) and Daphne (Javicia Leslie) are already on their way.
At the hotel, Oz and Daphne secure the scene. Teddy was there to deliver a keynote when the attacker struck—caught on camera thanks to a photo the little girl was taking at exactly the wrong, or right, moment. Morgan and Karadec interview Heidi in the lobby. Heidi and Teddy worked together professionally for twelve years before their relationship turned romantic; the engagement moved fast. She becomes emotional recounting the attack. Oz interrupts with hotel security footage, and the team watches it together. Heidi doesn’t recognize the attacker.
Morgan examines the carpet on the staircase. The attacker moved at speed, and the fibers tell a story: track spikes—red with a black heel stripe, belonging to St. Emily’s Women’s College. Morgan narrows it to one runner: Arden Prescott (Lindsay Elton), the only athlete on the team capable of an eleven-second hundred-meter. She tells the others she’ll meet them there.
At home, Morgan finds Elliot (Matthew Lamb) already reading about Teddy, visibly heartbroken. She tells him she’s on the case. He once wrote Teddy a letter and got one back—had always hoped to meet him. He can’t understand it; Teddy was famously kind.
At St. Emily’s, Morgan and Karadec knock on Arden’s dorm room. Her roommate Christine (Katie Silverman) answers; Arden is nowhere to be found, and Christine hasn’t seen her since yesterday. She lets them look around and heads to class. The room is a study in contrasts. Morgan zeroes in on the trash: an empty pie box. On the corkboard, a newspaper clipping—Sister Lucy (Tijuana Ricks), a track and field coach and choir director, is clearly an important person in Arden’s life.
In New York, Soto locates Willa Quinn at a restaurant, mid-lunch with an impatient client named Larry (Todd Aaron Brotze), who is quietly panicking over a public scandal. Willa invites Soto to sit with practiced hospitality. Soto mentions Roman Sinquerra’s disappearance. Willa produces a tidy alternate lead—a twenty-seven-year-old woman in Florida with the same name—but Soto isn’t ready to go there yet. When Willa tries to distract by motioning for the check, Soto claims she already took care of it, forcing Willa to stay present. Willa gets under Soto’s skin by correctly guessing the location of her layover from LAX and correctly guessing Soto is from New York. Soto mentions Erik Hayworth and offers a number to reach her at the Wheaton, then excuses herself. When the waitress returns with the check, it turns out Soto never actually paid it.
Back at LAPD, the lab results land: the pie was laced with VX nerve agent. Morgan identifies it immediately from The Rock. He is less amused: VX is not something you buy on a street corner. Before they can dig further, Sister Lucy arrives.
The nun has known Arden since her freshman year. Karadec explains the nerve agent may have been passed to Arden through an international track event, putting her in serious danger. He promises help if she cooperates. Sister Lucy goes quiet, then gives up Arden’s location.
Sister Lucy leads them to a small office and knocks. Arden is inside, furious that the nun didn’t hide her. Her backpack is stuffed with textbooks—she wasn’t exactly prepared to disappear. She swears she didn’t know what was in the pie. Karadec and Morgan believe her, but they still have to bring her in.
In questioning, Arden explains through her lawyer, Gordie Flores (Andrew Gonzalez), that she was contacted over social media by an account claiming to represent FollyBox, a viral prank channel. She’d never met anyone from the production; everything came through direct messages. A box arrived containing a pie, a mask, gloves, and a photo with a target, a time, and a location. She followed instructions and never questioned them. Daphne asks if she verified the account. Arden hadn’t. Karadec concludes the real FollyBox producer never made contact—Arden was set up. They need access to her social accounts to find whoever did this, and she’ll need to stay in custody while they look.
Soto checks into her hotel and calls Morgan. She’s convinced Willa knew she was coming before she arrived. She opens the closet and stops cold: a black dress, hanging neatly, with a notecard. “You wanted my attention. You have it. Meet me at The Poitiers.”
At LAPD, Wagner finds Morgan and asks how Soto is holding up. She’s skeptical of his sudden helpfulness, and she says so. He explains himself: truth in his family was always negotiated, so he tested people—rattled cages to see what would break. Morgan asks what he found. “They’re good people,” he says. “I forgot some cops can be honest.” He’s been digging on Quinn and thinks they’ll need someone skilled at spotting lies inside lies. Morgan gets back to work.
The VX angle opens a new thread: the agent has been used this way before. Karadec wonders if it’s a copycat rather than a connected case. Teddy spent significant time with Russian cosmonauts and was rumored to have shared information he shouldn’t have. The team plans to speak with Heidi again in the morning about whether Teddy might have been a spy.
Soto arrives at an elegant party in the dress Willa provided. Willa greets her like an old friend; a photographer snaps their picture. “You have to be so careful who you’re seen with these days,” Willa says slyly. Soto brings up Roman again. Willa offers nothing. Soto has done her homework: Willa’s father died after losing his benefits; her mother was a public school teacher who died of cancer; her brother, too. “My parents believed in rules that don’t exist and systems that failed them,” Willa says. She gets her justice in rooms like this one. Soto tells her she’s neither impressed nor scared, promises to have Marvin schedule time on her calendar, and leaves.
The next morning, Heidi walks Morgan and Karadec through the house—every corner filled with space mission artifacts. Morgan hangs back to look while Karadec handles the conversation. They raise the toxin and ask about secret meetings. Teddy, Heidi says, claimed he simply had dinners with his Russian counterparts. Morgan finds his prepared keynote speech. He planned to publicly endorse AstraMollis, a private company bidding on a commercial space station contract worth billions. With Congress listening to Teddy, that endorsement could have been decisive. Morgan thinks she’s found the motive.
Karadec briefs Wagner on the AstraMollis theory. Daphne and Oz begin researching other stakeholders who might want it stopped. Wagner pulls Karadec aside and asks how to get Morgan to let him help. Karadec’s answer is simple: you have to let her come to it herself.
In New York, an associate escorts Soto to Willa’s office. Willa is forthcoming about being impressed. She makes an offer: triple the pay, no politics, fast-moving cases. Soto declines to be poached and lays out the chain of events connecting Willa to Roman’s disappearance. “I’m afraid you’re on the wrong trail,” Willa says. Soto produces the phone Erik Hayworth was carrying, found in Roman’s backpack, explaining that it’s currently being extracted. She offers Willa a path to be seen differently in court if she cooperates. Willa stays composed. Soto leaves.
Oz and Daphne meet with Mr. Bashayan (Pritesh Shah) from GalaxyArk, a competing space station firm. He examines their designs with enthusiasm—then reacts with what looks like genuine surprise when they mention Teddy’s planned AstraMollis endorsement. No one saw the speech in advance, he reminds them. “I think your theory has a hole in it.”
Morgan works the board. Wagner drifts over. Daphne has confirmed with the event organizers that Teddy never shared the speech in advance. Oz floats the idea that Heidi was lying; Karadec says her financials are clean. Then they learn that Heidi is going to deliver Teddy’s keynote herself tomorrow, to honor his memory. Wagner thinks it’s strange. Daphne thinks it rules her out as a suspect. Morgan thinks it makes her a target.
Morgan and Karadec go back to Heidi and ask her to delay until the killer is found. She refuses. She wants to honor Teddy’s life and vision. Morgan mentions Elliot’s connection to Teddy, and Heidi softens into a memory: Teddy drove all night to find her favorite constellation—one rarely visible—because he wanted to get the proposal exactly right. She did a little cleanup on the speech and added her own section at the end. Karadec asks for a copy. Heidi also retrieves something for Elliot: Ziggi, a small plush lion Teddy took on every mission—his zero-gravity indicator. Morgan is moved.
Elliot immediately recognizes Ziggi from Teddy’s social posts and pulls up photos proving it. Morgan looks at the images more closely: in photo after photo, across months, Teddy holds the same pen. He has it the day he dies. Morgan wonders if the pen, like Ziggi, might have been more than a prop.
Late that night, Morgan returns to LAPD and requests both versions of the speech—Teddy’s original and Heidi’s revised draft. Side by side, the edits are strange. Oz wonders if it’s a coded message. Morgan sees a pattern: the swapped words share similar sounds, shapes, and functions, like word association exercises. She knows what those exercises are for. And if her theory is right, Heidi is safe to give that speech. “I know what this murder was about,” Morgan says.
Heidi comes to LAPD to review the security plan. After a warm moment discussing her added statement to the speech, Morgan announces that Heidi killed Teddy to protect his legacy. A search warrant—executed without Heidi’s knowledge while she was en route—turned up his real speech. Teddy had been diagnosed with brain cancer, likely caused by radiation exposure in space. He planned to go public and call for a halt to all space missions until proper safety standards were in place. The pen was a tremor aid. The word substitutions in the edited speech were symptoms of anomic aphasia—the gradual erosion of language skills. Heidi, as a member of the NASA ground team, had access to VX that was being studied as part of a zero-gravity antidote project. She posed as the FollyBox producer. She tried to talk Teddy out of the speech. When that failed, she arranged his death.
Heidi breaks down. The diagnosis changed Teddy, she says—he embraced life more fully, proposed to her, found new purpose. But his new stance on space research would have undone everything he stood for. “He was dying anyway, and he was going to ruin his legacy,” she sobs. “He needed me to save him from himself.” Karadec places her under arrest.
As Morgan heads to the elevator, Wagner stops her. He’s submitting a warrant to look into Quinn International. Soto is on her way back, and he thinks the only way forward on Roman is something big. He promises to find another angle if this one doesn’t hold. She asks why he’s doing all this. “I want to help,” he says. She holds the elevator. He has to stay and finish. They say goodnight.
Soto lands at LAX, on the phone with Wagner, relieved to hear that DAs on both coasts are now working the case. She rounds a corner—and stops. Willa Quinn is standing in the terminal, waiting for a car. Their eyes meet. Willa smiles as she steps into a sedan.
Next Episode: “Turn, Up the Heat” - Airing Tuesday, March 24th, at 9/8c on ABC.
Morgan relies on old friends to help with a case involving street artists, while Karadec leans on the women in his life during a time of need.
Songs Featured in This Episode:
- “Astronaut” by Wlerado
- “catch these fists” by Wet Leg
- “Therefore I Am” by Billie Eilish
- “doing my best” by Hazlett