In an infamous twist, Roseanne’s original series finale killed off John Goodman’s Dan. How did the season 10 revival and The Conners bring him back?
John Goodman’s Dan died at the end of Roseanne’s original run, but the 2017 revival managed to retcon this major twist pretty comfortably. The Conners killed off Roseanne and managed the impressive coup of replacing the show’s title character while keeping Roseanne afloat as a franchise. However, things could have worked out very differently had Roseanne stuck with its original plan.
John Goodman rose to stardom in the 90s when he played Dan, Roseanne’s long-suffering husband, in Roseanne. However, the disastrous Roseanne season 9 featured much less screen time for Dan and the series finale infamously revealed that Dan had secretly died of a heart attack at the end of season 8, with the rest of his appearances being a fantasy that Roseanne made up to assuage her loneliness and grief. However, Dan was alive and well in Roseanne season 10 and The Conners as the popular sitcom’s revival immediately retconned this divisive development and revealed that it was instead season 9’s events that Roseanne had imagined. In this way, The Conners managed to successfully work around what would have been one of its lead characters’ deaths.
Why John Goodman Left Roseanne In Season 9
The Roseanne cast smiling
While Dan did appear in Roseanne season 9, it was in a greatly reduced capacity. Although Goodman starred in every episode of Roseanne from seasons 1—8, in season 9, he was present for only 12 out of the 24 episodes. Although Dan was central to the series, Goodman’s rumored struggles with Roseanne Barr and the actor’s ambitions for his movie career led him to pare down his role in season 9. Dan’s absence caused some plot holes in Roseanne season 9, but these were the least of the show’s problems at the time. Roseanne season 9 was far wackier and more cartoonish than its predecessors, abandoning the sitcom’s grounded humor.
How Roseanne Season 9 Killed Off Dan
The conners season 5 Roseanne Halloween plot hole
Roseanne’s season 8 finale angered a lot of longtime viewers and critics with a plot where Dan cheated on Roseanne, a development that was out of character for the loyal husband. This was only the beginning of Roseanne’s outlandish plots. A full-episode Rambo parody saw Roseanne save Hilary Clinton from terrorists while the Conners solved all of their longstanding money woes overnight when they won the lottery and became millionaires. Roseanne, like The Conners, leaned into brutal economic realities to ground the humor of the sitcom, so seeing the struggling family completely removed from their once-realistic surroundings turned season 9 into Roseanne’s least popular outing.
To acknowledge the disappointment felt by viewers and reviewers alike, Roseanne’s series finale took things to the other extreme. The maudlin ending revealed that the family never won the lottery, but continued to toil near the poverty line. Dan never cheated on Roseanne, but he instead died of a heart attack that had originally seemed to barely affect him in the season 8 finale. In a crushing twist, Roseanne’s series finale revealed that Roseanne was alone without the love of her life and had made up all of the season’s goofy adventures to distract from her heartbreak. The revelation was the most devastating death in Roseanne (or The Conners) history, and it was undone in a few seconds by the season 10 revival.
How Roseanne Season 10 Retconned Dan’s Fate
Roseanne and Dan in Roseanne
When Roseanne awoke at the beginning of Roseanne season 10, she rolled over to see Goodman’s Dan lying in bed with her and informed her husband that she thought he was dead. Dan sardonically replied that this kept happening to him in a winking meta-joke about the famous twist. To further explain the retcon, later in Roseanne’s season 10 premiere, Dan flipped through an unpublished book that Roseanne wrote years earlier and told her that it would have been a success if only she hadn’t killed off its most compelling hero. Evidently, in Roseanne season 10/The Conners canon, Dan’s death was part of the fictional book that Roseanne wrote, as was Jackie coming out.
Why Roseanne Season 10 Needed To Rewrite The Show’s History
Roseanne revival cast photo
Dan was one of the most popular characters in Roseanne and Goodman’s presence was central to the appeal of the series. Without Dan’s mediating influence, Roseanne’s character could easily become grating, as many of season 9’s plots proved. Thus, Roseanne’s season 10 revival always needed to find a way to undo the biggest twist in the history of the series, and simply saying that season 9 was a story Roseanne made up was an easy way out. Not all of Roseanne’s plot holes were solved by this explanation, but Dan’s inexplicable return was justified and this was more fitting for the tone of the sitcom. While Roseanne was never entirely light-hearted, the series was not a dark, morbid show either, meaning Dan’s original death never fit its tone.
