ABC's 'High Potential' Replacement Officially Sets Release Date
Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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After only two seasons on ABC, High Potential has already established itself as the crown jewel in the network's lineup, at least in terms of viewership. Kaitlin Olson's return as the wicked-smart Morgan Gillory for Season 2 kept the momentum going from a red-hot debut, ending as the third-most-watched series on broadcast television for the 2025/26 season with 16 million viewers tuning in on average in 35-day multiplatform rankings. For the start of the 2026/27 season, however, the Disney-owned network will be without its biggest hit of last year. Season 3 is being held for the mid-season, but at least one of ABC's colorful detectives is due to return this fall and fill that gap.
While delaying a flagship hit creates a temporary void in the weekly grid, it also gives the network an opportunity to pivot toward its broader stable of character-driven dramas. Holding major ratings drivers for mid-season is a deliberate strategy to maintain momentum into the spring, leaving early autumn open for reliable procedurals to anchor key time slots. To pull that off, ABC needed a proven performer capable of capturing immediate viewer interest and setting a high bar for the rest of the fall lineup.
Collider Exclusive · Villain Personality Quiz Which Criminal Mastermind Would Be Your Nemesis? Lecter · Joker · Moriarty · Chigurh
Four of the finest criminal minds ever put on screen. One of them would look at you and see something worth their time. Eight questions decide which one comes for you, why they picked you, and what they would want when they arrived.
🍷Lecter
🃏Joker
♟️Moriarty
🪙Chigurh
01
What would a criminal mastermind notice about you first? Great villains choose their opponents carefully. Something about you got their attention.
02
How do they make first contact? The introduction tells you everything about what is coming next.
03
What do you actually believe about right and wrong? Every nemesis is really an argument about the thing you believe most.
04
What finally gets under your skin? Everybody has a pressure point. Finding yours is the whole plan.
05
They have made their move. How do you fight back? This is the part of the film where the audience finds out who you are.
06
What would they use against you? A good villain never brings a weapon you have not already handed them.
07
What do they actually want from you? The money is never the point. Something else always is.
08
How does it end between the two of you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who comes for you.
The Case File Is Complete Your Nemesis Is…
Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours. Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from the encounter.
Hannibal Lecter
Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the conversation is.
- Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
- You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve is exactly the door he would knock on.
- The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence. It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
- He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.
The Joker
Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.
- The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
- He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool you would normally reach for.
- His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend the rest of your life proving him wrong.
- He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.
Moriarty
Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.
- Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from: a mind the equal of the hero's, pointed the wrong way.
- You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he has already built the room.
- This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs the game to be worth playing.
- It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.
Anton Chigurh
Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.
- Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
- You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no interest in how capable you are.
- No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
- Call it. He will wait.
Where Did 'R.J. Decker' Leave Off?
After CBS pulled back the curtain on all of its fall premiere dates, ABC is now following suit and, in the process, confirming that R.J. Decker would return on Tuesday, September 15. That leaves less than two months until the former photographer and his team can start addressing that bombshell finale and, ultimately, clearing his name once again. It's by far the earliest of the network's scripted primetime programs to debut, with the next closest being Scrubs Season 2 on September 30. Scott Speedman will be back with his camera at the ready, rejoined by Jaina Lee Ortiz, Bevin Bru, Kevin Rankin, and Adelaide Clemens.
R.J. Decker Season 1 followed the titular ex-con after he was released from prison for a crime he didn't commit. Disgraced and out of a job as a newspaper photographer, he takes up the mantle of a private investigator, solving the most out-there crimes in South Florida and finding a bit of personal redemption in the process. Helping him tackle this colorful, crime-ridden world are some familiar faces, including his journalist ex and her police detective wife, as well as the woman who sent him to jail in the first place and is now acting as his shady benefactor. Although its renewal came down to the wire, it immediately made a splash with critics and audiences and debuted with over 11 million views across Disney's platforms.
Before the hot new procedural closed out Season 1, R.J. and his team revisited the incident that landed the P.I. in prison and got some semblance of closure. They were able to not only retrieve R.J.'s SD card with the incriminating photo that pinned Victor Ochoa's (David Zayas) men to the scene of a murder, but also found enough evidence to send Victor to prison. However, that victory was short-lived when Victor was found dead in his pool, leaving a new mystery to solve and potentially more problems for R.J. and Emi (Ortiz), in particular. After creating the series loosely based on Carl Hiaasen's novel Double Whammy, showrunner Rob Doherty will be tasked with formulating another comedic and intriguing chapter for R.J. Decker that builds off that bombshell, while introducing some other colorful crimes along the way.
R.J. Decker Season 2 premieres on Tuesday, September 15. Stay tuned here at Collider for more as ABC's fall season approaches.
- Release Date
- March 3, 2026
- Network
- ABC
- Directors
- Paul McGuigan, Christine Moore, Holly Dale, Kenneth Biller, Michael Lehmann, Seith Mann
-
Victor Ochoa
-
Enya Flack
Georganna Ballard
-
R.J. Decker
-
Donny Boaz
Preston Howard
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.