High Potential's penultimate episode before its Season 1 finale introduces exciting guest stars, such as New Amsterdam alum Jocko Sims and Agents of SHIELD star Briana Venskus-Vasquez.
The new episode of the trending crime series from ABC sees Morgan and the team investigate the death of a high-profile tech magnate, Anson Pierce. In unexpected fashion, the FBI joins the case as Detective Karadec reunites with his former partner from Major Crimes.
Meanwhile, Taran Killam returns as Ludo Radovic as he deals with some family trouble back at home.
High Potential Episode 12 premiered on ABC on February 4.
High Potential Episode 12 Cast Guide
Seth Duhame - Coroner
Seth Duhame plays the coroner who was attacked by the suspect to prevent him from transporting Pierce's body from the LAPD to the FBI.
Duhame is a stunt performer known for his work on Nobody Wants This, The Mandalorian, and The Gray Man.
Michael James Lazar - Pilot
Michael James Lazar appears as a pilot who is being forced by the killer to get him away from Los Angeles as soon as possible.
Lazar can be seen in 9-1-1, This Is Us, and As We See It.
Frank Krueger - Kenneth Sutton
Frank Krueger portrays Kenneth Sutton, a board-certified medical toxicologist at California Poison Control who created the poison to kill Anson Pierce.
Krueger is known for his roles in Stripped, Winning Time: The Rise of Lakers Dynasty, and S.W.A.T.
Matt Linton - Simon Keating
Matt Linton plays Simon Keating, a hacker who planted a USB drive into Anson's pocket. He claims that he is simply helping him not to get hacked by his haters.
Linton's notable credits include Wine Club, Art Thief, and How I Met Your Father.
Kyle Harris - Anson Pierce
The victim of the week in High Potential's penultimate episode is Kyle Harris' Anson Pierce, a tech magnate who made a fortune by instanly making deepfake videos.
Harris also starred in Stitchers, High Maintenance, and God Friended Me.
Diandra Lyle - Coroner
Diandra Lyle appears as the primary coroner of the LAPD who spearheads in making the toxicology report to determine the kind of poison used in Anson Pierce's death.
Lyle is known for appearing in Bel-Air, Secrets of Sulphur Springs, and Quantum Leap.
Andy Martinez Jr. - Terry
Andy Martinez Jr.'s Terry is a former Navy SEAL who becomes one of Anson Pierce's bodyguards.
Martinez Jr. has credits in S.W.A.T., Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Days of Our Lives.
Joe Alvarez - Hank
Hank (played by Joe Alvarez) is another member of Anson Pierce's security detail. He is a former coast guard.
Alvarez previously appeared in Night Court, NCIS: Origins, and Criminal Minds.
Marshall Cook - Parker
Marshall Cook plays Parker, a former S.W.A.T. officer who becomes one of the body guards of Anson Pierce.
Cook can be seen in Goliath, Film Fest, and Weeds.
Amanda Perez - Aria Vale
Amanda Perez portrays Aria Vale, Anson Pierce's fling from Orange County who met him hours before his death.
Perez's notable credits include Night Court, How We Roll, and Call Me Kat.
Taran Killam - Ludo Radovic
Taran Killam returns in Episode 12 as Ludo Radovic after making a prominent appearance in High Potential Episode 6.
Ludo is Morgan's ex and Elliot's father who is getting overwhelmed with parenting duties due to Morgan being busy with her job with the LAPD.
Killam, who is the husband of Cobie Smulders, has credits in Saturday Night Live, 12 Years a Slave, and Brother Nature.
Eileen Grubba - Gloria
Eileen Grubba stars as Gloria, Anson's mother who is devastated to learn about his son's death.
Grubba has over 100 credits, with roles in Sons of Anarchy, Dark Hearts, and This Is Us.
Jocko Sims - Ronnie Oliver
Jocko Sims guest stars in High Potential Episode 12 as Ronnie Oliver, an FBI agent and the former partner of Detective Adam Karadec who joins the investigation behind the death of Anson Pierce.
Karadec and Oliver are not exactly in good terms so they end up clashing during the investigation.
Sims' most recognizable roles include playing Dr. Floyd Reynolds in New Amsterdam, Alex in How to Die Alone, and Lt. Carlton Burk in The Last Ship.
Briana Venskus-Vasquez - Rina
Briana Venskus-Vasquez appears as Rina, an FBI profiler who butts heads with Morgan. She is also a member of Ronnie's team.
Venskus-Vasquez is known for her roles in Supergirl, Agents of SHIELD, and The Walking Dead.
Here are the main actors who appeared in High Potential Episode 10:
- Kaitlin Olson - Morgan
- Daniel Sunjata - Adam Karadec
- Javicia Leslie - Daphne
- Deniz Akdeniz - Lev “Oz” Osman
- Judy Reyes - Captain Selena
- Matthew Lamb - Elliot
- Amirah J - Ava
High Potential Episode 12 Plot Recap
A Tech Magnate Dies
High Potential Episode 12, "Partners," begins with Anson Pierce, a tech magnate and the founder of Virgo Core Beta Systems, cuddling with his dog while inside a private normal.
While this seems to be a normal day for him, it tragically leads to his unexpected death after he collapses in the airport with foam spilling from his mouth, indicating that he is poisoned.
Meanwhile, at the Gillory residence, Ludo, Morgan's ex-husband is seen rushing back from the grocery store. He knows Morgan is busy which is why he takes the charge in taking care of the kids despite being overwhelmed by the responsibility.
Back at the airport, the LAPD is leading the investigation, with Detectives Oz, Daphne, and Karadec already on the scene. The Coroner tells them to not touch anything until she finds out the real cause of death.
Morgan arrives to learn more about the victim. It turns out that Anson Pierce developed a popular and controversial social media platform called Enigmafied where users can utilize AI to create deepfake videos within minutes.
The FBI, led by Special Agent Ronnie Oliver, then arrives on the scene who has ties to Detective Karadec's past. Oliver is Karadec's former partner from the LAPD, and they clearly has unresolved issues with one another.
Karadec Reunites With an Old Rival
Special Agent Oliver tries to assert his dominance in the crime scene by telling his former partner that any homicide that happens in US Airspace falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI.
However, Karadec rebutts by saying that it's too early to determine where the homicide originated, meaning that the FBI and LAPD have no other choice but to work together.
Oliver, though, tells Karadec that the LAPD is ill-equipped to handle such a high-profile case, and the FBI has the resources to pull it off. Still, Karadec insists that they can do it.
The FBI Special Agent invites himself back to the precinct to check the medical examiner's findings about Anson Pierce's death.
At the precinct, Karadec is clearly disturbed with the idea that he is working with Oliver again. He even asks Morgan to stop asking questions about his former partner and to simply focus on the case.
Karadec and Oliver work together to question Anson's mother, Gloria Price, about her late son. She only has good things to say about her son, believing that he is someone who has a good heart with no ill intentions toward anyone.
Still, Gloria points out that her son has enemies, mainly jealous competitors, stalkers, and every other tech bloggers.
More Bickering Between the Former Partners
After the interrogation, the medical examiner's preliminary autopsy report has been completed, and she finds a possible injection site where the poison could've entered Pierce's body. Morgan insists, though, that it is not likely.
Based on how Pierce died, the medical examiner points out that the poison is from the anthrax family.
This revelation prompts Oliver to request the transfer of the body from the LAPD to the FBI since they have the resources to find out the kind of poison and they can be able to track down who created it.
Before they can do that, the detectives need to question the three members of Anson Pierce's security detail: a former Navy SEAL, a S.W.A.T. team leader, and a coast guard.
They have no idea how Pierce is killed, and their only concern is the fact that it will be hard for them to look for new jobs because their boss died on their watch.
Karadec asks them about Pierce's two-hour meeting in Orange County hours before his death. The details about this meeting are not stated in his calendar, which makes it confusing.
Still, the trio insist that they do not know what happened since Pierce only told them to wait in the car during that significant meeting.
After the trio leaves, Morgan finds a flash drive that was found in the victim's jacket. She tells them that it not his because it is not a high-capacity flash drive that he created and often uses.
As Daphne plugs it into her computer, it turns out that it has malware that crashed the computers of the entire precinct, meaning that whoever gave him this could be their prime suspect since he or she clearly has motive in taking him down.
More Potential Suspects Come to Light
After the hacking fiasco, Lieutenant Soto orders Karadec and Morgan to head over to the FBI with Special Agent Oliver to assist in finding the culprit who slipped the flash drive into Anson Pierce's jacket.
During the FBI briefing, Morgan butts heads with an FBI profiler named Rina after she deduced that the suspect is likely a white male who can get close to the victim without raising any suspicion.
Morgan doesn't believe so. Based on her gut instinct, she thinks that the killer could be "a shut-in who hated Anson" due to his polarizing views about technology.
The bickering between the pair is cut short after the CCTV footage from Orange County reveals that the man that they are looking for is Simon Keating.
After they brought him in for questioning, Simon insists that he is innocent. He only slipped the flash drive because he wants to get Anson's attention because of how incompetent his malware team is.
However, this move backfires because he is now one of the potential suspects even if he did not kill him. He is simply a hacker who tried to protect Anson from other hackers by hacking him.
The Suspect Strikes Again
As the FBI waits for Anson Pierce's body to be transferred, things take a turn after the actual killer blow up the LAPD's van which has the body, meaning that they are all back to square one in identifying the kind of poison that was inside Pierce.
Oliver is furious with the LAPD about the whole mishap, but Karadec tries to pacify him by saying that no one would've anticipated what happened.
Morgan tries to calm everyone down by pointing out that the lead suspect could be the person whom Anson was meeting in Orange County during the two-hour window that he was unaccounted for.
Oliver and Karadec continue to fight over the case, with Oliver questioning Morgan's place in the investigation. Karadec defends Morgan by insisting that she can solve the case by allowing FBI to loop her in with their part in the investigation.
Oliver finally agrees after Karadec offers him a deal: the FBI needs to share all their intel with the LAPD, and if they come up empty, they will back off.
Soto advises Karadec to not let his past with Oliver cloud his judgement.
Karadec & Oliver's Falling Out Explained
As Morgan gets to work inside FBI's headquarters, she and Karadec end up with a potential suspect named Kenneth Sutton. His daughter died after committing suicide due to a deepfake video from Enigmafied.
While the FBI already cleared Sutton, Morgan notices something off during his weekly cemetary visit in his daughter's grave. He is wearing gloves, meaning that he could've planted the poison somewhere in the flowers so that the actual killer can get ahold of it.
As Morgan and Karadec try to question Sutton, he panics and stumbles onto the stairs, tragically leading to his death. The fact that he tried to escape means that he is guilty over something which is why the pair decide to search his apartment for clues.
While Ronnie is furious with Karadec over the death of a potential suspect, he reminds them that they are simply trying to solve the case and they need to work together and stop fighting already.
As Morgan and Karadec wait for the CCTV review of the suspect who retrieved the poison from the cemetery, Karadec comes clean at what really happened between him and Oliver in the past.
It turns out that they are the top two detectives of Major Crimes, but an incorrect entry from the evidence log about a money they retrieved from a case made them look guilty.
After Ronnie decided to move on and head to the FBI, Karadec picked up the slack and sort everything out on his own.
Once the trip down memory lane is over, Morgan theorizes that the bruises in Anson's body could be from a different kind of pleasure instead. Karadec asks Ronnie to pull more footage from Orange County, specifically the back entrance of a hotel nearby the office building where Anson was supposed to go to.
The FBI manage to track down a certain Aria Vale, a leader of a non-profit organization who is dedicated to shut down AI-driven companies like Anson's. It turns out that she is the woman whom Anson is meeting with in Orange County.
Who Killed Anson Pierce?
Aria Vale insists that she is innocent and she did not poison Anson. She later admits though that things become intimate between them which is why he has bruises before his death.
As a return, Morgan shifts her attention to Kenneth's apartment photos to find some more clues. She pieces everything together after remembering a famous quote from one of the books, Little Women, stashed in the book shelf: "It takes two flints to make a fire."
She deduces that Parker, who had a keychain with a flint on it and one of the security officers of Anson, must have been in a relationship with Kenneth's daughter before she died.
This means that Kenneth and Parker work together to kill Anson by using a compromised dog collar with poison.
The FBI tries to track down Parker, but his whereabouts are unknown, meaning he is on the run which further proves that he is guilty of the crime.
Daphne and Simon (the hacker that was captured earlier) work together to try and stop the avionics of the plane and prevent Parker from escaping.
The plan worked and Parker ends up being cornered by LAPD and the FBI.
After the case is solved, Karadec and Oliver resolve their own issues, and Oliver even tries to recruit his former partner to the FBI. However, Karadec declines since he already has a new partner, Morgan, and he feels LAPD is his home.
Elsewhere in the episode, Ludo is struggling with his duties as a father, with him even collapsing at one point.
As a way of giving back, the episode ends with Morgan surprising Ludo with Taco Night complete with a rewatch of Space Odyssey with the kids.
The Season 1 finale of High Potential will premiere on ABC on Tuesday, February 11, at 9 p.m. ET and can be streamed on Hulu the next day.
Read more about High Potential Episode 11's Knives Out-inspired mystery.
