The death of Roseanne Conner is at the center of the final season of The Conners. In the first episode of the abbreviated seventh and final season of the ABC sitcom, Roseanne Barr’s character’s accidental death from an opioid overdose was heavily resurrected as the family debated a lawsuit against the drug manufacturer. The unexpected revival of Roseanne’s story has some fans wondering if Barr could make a surprise return to close out the series.
In an interview with The Wrap, executive producer Bruce Helford was asked if Barr would be making one last appearance as the character she debuted nearly 40 years ago on the Roseanne show.
“We aren’t bringing anybody back from the dead,” Helford assured the outlet. But when asked if a ghostly version of Rosie would turn up, he coyly replied, “Well, I didn’t say not, but yeah.”
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Helford and co-producers Bruce Rasmussen and Dave Caplan told TV Line that the lawsuit storyline in the premiere episode, “It’s Gonna Be a Great Day” was inspired by a 2024 Supreme Court ruling regarding opioid-related lawsuits. “History threw this one in our laps,” Helford said of the focus on Roseanne Conner’s cause of death in The Conners final season.
Rasmussen noted that as far as the fictional character’s survivors go, Dan Conner (John Goodman) will be forced to “dig back into all of that grief” and will pay a “big price” as the season goes on.
Fans know that in the original Roseanne series, ghostly things did occur. Goodman’s character was said to have died in season 8, only to be brought back to life the following season. (The explanation was that his death was part of a fictional book that Roseanne wrote.)
But bringing Barr back would be a much bigger deal. After she was fired from her original show’s revival amid a racist tweet controversy, she was outraged that her TV family continued on without her with the 2018 Conners spinoff.
“They killed my character, and my character,” Barr told the Los Angeles Times in a 2023 interview. “And all of that was to say thank you for bringing 28 million viewers, which they never had before and will never see again. Because they can kiss my a–.”
“I don’t know why they did what they did,” she added. “I’m not like them. I realized that. I can’t believe what they did, with all the pain that I went through to bring the show back. And it didn’t faze them to murder my character, either.”
Barr clarified that she did “forgive” her former co-stars years later and felt that she was “better off” no longer being on the show.
