A familiar face showed up in The Conners Wednesday (March 13) night when legacy cast member Natalie West returned to the show to reprise her role as Crystal Anderson.
West featured on the fifth episode of the currently airing sixth season, marking her first appearance on the Roseanne spinoff since the popular sitcom’s inaugural 2018 run. She appeared in the episode “When Sisters Collide and The Return of the Grifters,” where it was revealed Dan (John Goodman) had been using money to pay for her medical bills.
Long-time viewers will remember West from Roseanne, where she starred in a total of 59 episodes across the show’s ten seasons. She was made a series regular for Seasons 3 and 4 and recurred before and after.
Her character, Crystal, was introduced as an old friend of Roseanne and Dan. She later married Dan’s father, Ed (Ned Beatty), and the pair had two children together, Ed Jr. and Angela. Crystal also had another son, Lonnie, from a previous marriage.
When she returned for the short-lived Roseanne revival in 2018, Crystal wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and she didn’t mention anything about her husband or her children.
After Roseanne was dropped and reimagined as The Conners, West briefly returned for the show’s first season. She appeared in the premiere, where she grieved Roseanne with Dan and the rest of the family. Viewers also learned later in the season that Crystal came out of retirement and returned to work at a local casino. She hadn’t been seen since then.
As per TVLine, in. Crystal’s comeback episode Jackie’s (Laurie Metcalf) husband Neville (Nat Faxon) found out money he’d loaned Dan was used to pay for Crystal’s medical bills.
“I used the $500 to buy her heart medicine,” Dan told Neville. “She was embarrassed to be taking a handout.”
He went on to explain how when Crystal was married to his dad, she noticed her ankles swelling, but Ed Sr. convinced her it was diuretics, and she never got tested. Later, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
“She just found out about a year ago, and I carry some of the blame for that,” Dan said.
It’s unclear if Crystal will appear in more episodes this season, but there are certainly some plot points left dangling. For example, where are the children in all this? Why aren’t they helping their mother? Hopefully fans will find out more in the episodes to come.
