High Potential Season 2 episode 3 ending explained: Who was behind the attack on Nathan Gould?

High Potential Season 2 episode 3 brought in a new case for Morgan Gillory and the LAPD. After closing the chapter of the Game Maker, the third episode, Eleven Minutes, didn’t take a second to introduce viewers to a new crime case. 

The episode opens with a man entering a cafe, getting into a table for two, but eventually gets attacked as someone chokes him with a plastic bag. He was Nathan Gould, who was waiting for someone special and was carrying a ladybug pin inside a gift box.

Morgan gets a call to be on the crime scene. Meanwhile, Eva asks Morgan to give her an update on his father, who disappeared years ago. Morgan brushes the topic off and tells her to talk about it later, as she needs to head to work. 

At the crime scene, the hostess at the cafe tells Karadec and Morgan that Nathan was very excited to meet someone. However, one thing at the cafe that Morgan found suspicious was the littered table. Every table in the café was messy; some had spilled food, while others had juice stains. Morgan realized that the attacker wanted Nathan to sit at a specific table where he could easily be attacked.

To answer the question of who attacked Nathan, it was Christopher Bishop, a paramedic, who staged the attack to secure Nathan’s heart for his ailing mother’s transplant.

The hostess said that she had just gone to clean the table, and as soon as she came back, Nathan was not there. However, she finds him 11 minutes later when the hostess hears the sound of ducks near his body. Morgan again found it suspicious, as she believes that if the ducks had really been around, they would have left droppings, but there was nothing.

Karadec and Morgan visit Nathan’s apartment in High Potential Season 2 episode 3

The scene then shifts to finding clues in Nathan’s apartment in High Potential Season 2 episode 3. While sniffing around, they learned that Nathan was into gambling. They found a Social Security number and a lot of overdue bill receipts at his place. 

Meanwhile, a man tried to break into Nathan’s place while Karadec and Morgan were inside. Karadec ran behind him and found that his boss, Ray, had sent him (Marco) with an empty syringe.

While they head to meet Ray, Morgan notices the electric card shufflers, and she understands that the gambling boss uses them to cheat at his games. She said that she had just learned the ins and outs of how the machine works, as her son had shown the day before on YouTube. She says, 

‘’The card shuffling machines aren’t as random as people think they are.’’

Since Ray refuses to talk to the police, Morgan walks him through everything in her own way, without questioning him. She says, 

‘’You sent Marco with an empty syringe, and we realized that he was going to inject an air bubble into Nathan’s bloodstream. So, if Marco went there to kill Nathan, then it means you and your guys didn’t attack Nathan earlier. Sending a guy to commit a murder proves that you didn’t commit that murder.''

So, Ray is off the suspect list for attacking Nathan by choking him with a plastic bag. But why an empty syringe and the house break-in? Well, Morgan breaks that, too. 

She says,

‘’He forced Nathan to make Ray the beneficiary of his insurance policy as a way to pay off his loans.’’ 

Marco would use an air bubble injection to make it look like Nathan died naturally. This would let Nathan transfer his life insurance to Ray using Ray’s Social Security number.

Karadec and Daphne interrogate Nathan’s daughter, Jessica, in High Potential Season 2 episode 3

Karadec shows Jessica the beneficiary forms of her dad’s life insurance policy, and she says that she was not aware that he had any. She was not in touch with him for years, and just a month ago, they reconciled and started to meet frequently. 

Nathan was divorced due to his gambling habits. Jessica said, 

‘’Months ago, he reached out to me out of the blue and said he was going to make things right.’’ 

They informed Jess about the gift that Nathan was carrying with him the day he was attacked. It was a ladybug. Jessica shared that it was a nickname of hers, and her dad used to call her ''ladybug'' when she was a kid, which proves that Nathan was at the cafe to meet Jessica. 

It turned out that the attacker managed to lure Nathan to another location as he went to the wrong address, while Jessica was waiting for him at a different café. 

Later, Daphne gets an update that Nathan got an email the night before the attack, claiming to be his daughter Jessica for changing the venue. It was a fake email under his daughter’s name. 

Morgan learns about the duck voices which was heard near Nathan’s body 

As the detective got their hand on Nathan’s phone, Morgan noticed that there was an alarm set on Nathan’s phone for 8 a.m. Morgan says, 

‘’The hostess heard a duck sound, and the ringtone in Nathan’s phone is set to be a duck’s sound. That’s what the cafe hostess heard in the alley. The killer wanted somebody to find his body around 8 o'clock in the morning, long after the attack, to make sure he was brain dead, but soon enough to make sure his organs were still viable.’’

Soto and Karadec question the first responders who took Nathan to the hospital. Soto asks, 

‘’How long would a victim have to be down in order to guarantee they would be brain dead?’’

Bishop replied, 

‘’Eleven Minutes.’’

Nathan was about to take his life initially to get out of his gambling mess, and gave a word to someone to donate his heart. But when Nathan and Jessica reconciled, he learns that he was going to be a grandfather and decided to step back from donating his organ.

So, whoever the killer was, he wanted Nathan’s heart and ensured that during the attack, his organs would survive. Later, Soto and Morgan try to track where Nathan’s heart was sent for transplant. They ask the hospital staff in charge of organ donations, but find nothing.

Meanwhile, Eva and Morgan get arrested. Eva learns from Morgan that her father was living in Nevada, but they don’t find more updates on him when the detectives went there. Eva was arrested for vandalizing the property, which was one of her dad’s murals. Morgan, in order to protect her, accidentally splashes the paint on the officer, leading to their arrest. 

Eva later apologizes for her actions. Morgan makes her understand that they haven’t heard her father’s side of the story as to why he suddenly disappeared. She tells Eva about the case she is currently working on, where a father, after a long time, was finally reconnecting with his daughter and trying to make things right.

Christopher Bishop attacked Nathan 

While figuring out who could be somebody who needs a heart transplant, and can even intimidate the whole hospital to get it. Morgan shows her daughter the Nathan Gould case files, and they suspect Carson Wood, a movie producer with heart problems, as a possible candidate.

The guy was posting old photos on social media and hasn’t been in public for months, and has been hiding the fact that he’s sick. Daphne and Karadec go to meet him, but he says that he is getting a heart transplant in Utah and is not aware who Nathan really is. While stepping out of his place, they get the news that the heart has been stolen. 

While questioning hospital staff, she revealed that Carson Wood pressured the hospital by threatening to cut his funding, which led them to remove the name of Nathan’s original chosen recipient for the heart.

The staff doesn’t know who was going to get Nathan’s heart. So, Morgan gets the transplant list. She rules out many patients' names from the list due to medical reasons and gets her eye on the name: Rosemary Caferri. 

She picked out her name as she was first married to Mr.Bishop, and Christopher is her son from her first marriage. And the second clue was that she was on Albuterol, which Christopher and her fellow worker once said that they were always out on that particular drug (Albuterol), which proved that he was stealing for his mom. 

As Nathan backed off from donating his heart, he staged the cafe attack. Towards the end of High Potential Season 2 episode 3, Christopher gets arrested and hugs her mom. Meanwhile, Morgan hands the ladybug pin to Jessica, and Karadec updates Morgan that Nathan’s heart has been donated to another patient.