The young striker burst onto the scene during a difficult campaign and was a regular under Neil Critchley, earning his Scotland debut in March last year.
Minutes were difficult to come by under Derek McInnes and the 19-year-old spent the second half of last season on loan at Tottenham Hotspur's academy side.
And after returning and getting a decent amount of playing time this pre-season, Wilson has again had to make do with looking on from the side.
While Claudio Braga, Landry Kabore and Amadou Ba-Sy have all had plenty of game time so far, Wilson has yet to start a match since the competitive action got under way.
He made a big contribution to the 6-2 win in the League Cup on Sunday. He replaced Ba-Sy in attack at half-time, with Wouter Vrancken unhappy with the French forward’s application. One thing that has never been questioned about Wilson.
Against Inverness, the teenage striker dropped deep off the front and linked well with those around him. And, as he seems to have a knack for, he was in the right place at the right time to head in from close range to put Hearts 4-2 up after they team had fallen 2-1 behind.
All very promising.
Yet, with his deal due to expire at the end of the season, his future is as clear as the roads around Gorgie in the build-up to kick-off.
Wilson appears to be comfortable with the situation, at least for now. “I just need to make sure that I'm doing everything I can off the pitch. It's up to the manager, it's up to the people who make the decisions,” he said in his usual laid-back manner.
“If they believe that I'm doing the right job off the pitch, if they can trust me to play, then it's on them. But I just need to make sure that I'm in the best condition I can be.
“I’ve been working really hard in the gym, on the pitch, just hoping for the chance and I got that on Sunday.”
On Vrancken, he added: “It's still really early. He only had about three weeks before he came into the competitive games. I wasn't here last year either, so he hasn't seen much of me.
“I’m just taking it in my stride. He's probably still getting to know everyone, he's still getting to see everything. I'm quite relaxed, just keep working hard and hoping that the opportunity comes.”
For a player who only made six league appearances and wasn’t at the club for half the season, there was a lot of debate about Wilson over the course of the previous campaign.
The main source was his loan move to Spurs. Amid last season’s Scottish Premiership title race, McInnes was critical about the January move and said that the striker should have stayed to “fight” for his place.
“His agent knew that our preference was to stay, fight for your place, be part of something, get you a loan in Scotland if need be, if you need to top your minutes up and we can maybe recall you,” McInnes said at the time. “So you still get the best of both worlds."
The trouble for Wilson was there was little sign of any meaningful time on the field at that point. Even after Lawrence Shankland was ruled out with an injury, Wilson’s only involvement in the two games that followed was as an injury-time substitution in the 2-2 draw with Celtic.
That was one of three cameos since his only league start of the season, the 3-3 draw with Motherwell at Tynecastle in August of that season. A total of seven minutes plus injury time between the end of August and when he signed for Spurs on February 2.
It’s no wonder he chose to seek football elsewhere and to avoid a full season of looking on from the sidelines.
There was an option to buy that Tottenham didn’t exercise, but from the point of view of playing more football, Wilson was vindicated. He scored four times in his first eight Premier League 2 appearances.
He trained daily with world-class players and even made the first-team bench on two occasions, against Liverpool and in the North London derby, sitting alongside the likes of Richarlison, Dominic Solanke, Xavi Simons and Randal Kolo Muani.
Wilson stands by his decision to move south: “One hundred per cent. It was four months. For me, there were about 10 games in that period. Or I can get the experience of going down and training with a good Premier League side.
“There's loads of things that I picked up on but you're surrounded by amazing players. World-class players that are getting to play in the Premier League, playing in the World Cup. You learn loads of bits off them.
“I feel like I'm a better player for it coming back. I’m just hoping I can show that now.
“Obviously everyone looks at that move going down south as your going down to play 21s football. But the experience of training with their first team, being on the bench, the facilities, all that. The physical nature of it.
“The link-up play, especially. I think you see that [on Sunday], the way I take it in and play it wide. That was something that got drilled into me down at Spurs.”
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Hearts benefited from that conditioning in the second half against Inverness. Many times, Wilson dropped off the front, took the ball in and found someone wide, including in the build-up to his goal. He was also in a position to receive a square pass for a tap-in for Calvin Miller’s strike and for Josh McPake’s disallowed goal.
Wilson’s striker’s instincts, intelligence and movement are all traits that work well in Vrancken’s way of playing. His downfall is not possessing the same physical attributes as his direct competition.
“That's a style that we want to play,” said Wilson. “The manager’s drilled that into us, is that we can kill teams when we switch to play really quickly and we naturally have someone wide out there.
“For me, if someone runs out in front of me, then I'm coming back in to get set to play and go. Whether it's me playing it or someone else, it's just trying to get a switch and play really quickly.
“We have a lot of counter movements in the team now. Whether it's a No.10, the striker, the wide players running beyond. You've got to be smart, you've got to understand where people are moving.
“It's not just where you want to go, but if someone's running beyond you, then you need to drop.
“That's a key message. Strikers especially, being the six-yard box, that's where the most goals are scored. I showed that on Sunday.”
And for how level-headed he comes across, Wilson has a little bit of selfishness – something that all good strikers should have.
At 2-1 down, he revealed his thoughts were: “I was quite looking forward to trying to be the hero, to be honest. It was good to get my goal.
“I honestly don't score any good goals here. I'm not sure I've scored a goal more than six yards, but now I'll take it. It was just trying to be in the right place at the right time.”
Who knows how the next season, or the next month for that matter, will pan out for the young Scotland international.
If the right offer comes in, like any other player, he will move on. If he stays, Sunday proved that he could be a useful player for Vrancken between now and the end of the season.
If Wilson can force his way into the team regularly, would that open the door to a new deal? That seems unlikely as it stands. More likely, if he stays, he will see out his contract and leave at the end of the season.
The risk for Wilson would then be more time watching on from the sidelines instead of getting as many minutes as possible at a crucial stage in his development. A risk that surely increases with Hearts in the market for another striker.