‘High Potential’: Steve Howey Leaving As Captain Nick Wagner After S2

SPOILER ALERT: The story contains particulars in regards to the Season 2 finale of ABC’s Excessive Potential.

EXCLUSIVE: For a second 12 months in a row, ABC’s hit crime procedural Excessive Potential ended its season finale on a serious cliffhanger. This time, it concerned the lifetime of one of many principal characters hanging within the steadiness after Morgan (Kaitlin Olson) discovered Captain Nick Wagner (Steve Howey) gravely injured.

The Season 2 finale marked the final episode as a collection common for Howey, Deadline can reveal. That’s not a shocking improvement; he joined as a collection common early within the season with a one-year deal.

That mentioned, Wagner’s destiny — and Howey’s future on the present — haven’t been absolutely decided but. In line with sources, there’s a probability for Howey to return as a visitor star at first of subsequent season to wrap his character’s arc.

The ultimate resolution will seemingly relaxation with the brand new Excessive Potential showrunner and their writing group. As Deadline reported on the time of the collection’ Season 3 renewal in March, Todd Harthan is departing after working the collection for the primary two seasons. The seek for a brand new showrunner continues.

Wagner has been a divisive character, beginning with the notorious Stachegate. The brand new Captain was launched sporting a mustache, a glance that received such a robust detrimental response, the producers moved in to shave it off a number of episodes in. (The mustache was requested by one other collection Howey was filming on the similar time that required his character to have a full beard.)

General, Howey didn’t have a lot to work with for many of the season. Wagner had solely occasional presence and went MIA for awhile, coming throughout as a shady character and a attainable villain who was arrange as a possible love curiosity for Morgan early on.

That began to alter within the last stretch when Wagner’s arc picked up momentum, culminating within the penultimate episode full of Wagner’s backstory and his first (and solely) kiss with Morgan.

Within the Season 2 finale, suspicious Soto (Judy Reyes) and Morgan confronted Wagner about his affiliation together with his corrupt politician father. In final proof of his allegiance to Morgan, he gave her the improper time for his assembly with a FBI supply on the case of Morgan’s lacking ex that his father had related him with. The 30 min delay proved essential as Wagner was shot through the encounter and Morgan was spared, arriving to search out him bleeding out.

Howey is conserving a really busy schedule. The Shameless and Reba alum has a serious recurring position on the buzzy Prime Video college-set romantic drama Off Campus, based mostly on the best-selling ebook collection by Elle Kennedy, which already has been renewed for a second season. He additionally is ready to recur within the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Ransom Canyon as Josh Duhamel’s half-brother and in Season 5 of the streamer’s The Lincoln Lawyer.

The Excessive Potential finale additionally wrapped the storyline of one other main Season 2 solid addition launched to maintain Morgan and Karadec (Daniel Sunjata) aside, Susan Kelechi Watson, who recurred as Karadec’s ex-fiancée Lucia.

Like Howey, the This Is Us alumna was underutilized, solely showing briefly, nearly completely with Sunjata, with their characters having a glass of wine after work right here and there. Additionally like Howey, Lucia received a significant storyline on the very finish of the season as she grew to become a key participant within the finale’s homicide. She was implicated within the case, with heartbroken Karadec dealing with her reserving himself.