Although the death of Roseanne’s heroine will always be the defining tragedy of the spinoff, The Conners season 6 finale managed to make the event even sadder in retrospect. Roseanne Barr played the eponymous heroine of Roseanne throughout the show’s first nine seasons in the ‘90s. After the ninth season’s disastrous reviews led to its cancelation in 1997, Roseanne was revived for a belated tenth season in 2017. Roseanne’s revival was met with mixed reviews and ratings success, but Barr’s racist tweets saw her fired after the finale aired. Her character was killed offscreen and the series was renamed.
Although The Conners season 7 will be the show’s final outing, this doesn’t mean the show has been a failure. If anything, The Conners’ cast of characters has succesfully replaced Roseanne’s original heroes since the show kept all of its main and supporting cast members after killing off Barr’s character. The Conners continued the family’s story, with the spinoff’s first season focusing on their grief over Roseanne’s sudden death. While the series moved on from this tragedy over time, The Conners season 6 finale made the event even sadder by illustrating its unforeseen impact on their lives.
In season 6’s finale, Becky’s decision to pursue another branch of psychology proved just how profoundly her mother’s death reshaped her life path.
In The Conners season 6, episode 13, “Less Money, More Problems,” Becky revealed she cannot work with addicts in her position as a trainee counselor. Thanks to her mother’s overdose and her own alcoholism, which she developed after Roseanne’s death, Becky became too emotionally invested in this line of work and began blurring the line between patients and friends. This led her to establish unhealthy, unprofessional relationships with addicts, resulting in her pulling away from this work at the end of episode 11, “Fire and Vice.” This subplot revived Becky’s saddest story from the early seasons of The Conners.
Shortly after Roseanne died from an overdose of opioid pain medication, Dan discovered that Becky had a drinking problem she hid from the family. Becky tried going cold turkey but repeatedly relapsed, struggling with her family’s history of addiction as well as her grief over Roseanne’s sudden death. Becky’s addiction mirrored Roseanne’s tragic season 10 secret, although she attended rehab before it was too late. In season 6’s finale, Becky’s decision to pursue another branch of psychology proved just how profoundly her mother’s death reshaped her life path. This wasn’t the only tragic reminder of the event in the outing.
Since Roseanne died, she never got to see Harris become an independent, responsible adult running her own restaurant only a few years later.
When Roseanne returned to screens in 2017, there was an awkward push-pull between Sara Gilbert’s Darlene and the show’s original heroine to work out who was the show’s main character. A single mother struggling to raise her two children, Darlene seemed like a natural successor to the original show’s heroine. However, Darlene was no Roseanne replacement and Roseanne remained central to the revival, criticizing her daughter’s parenting style while simultaneously trying to support Darlene at times. This uneasy relationship reached its zenith in the fight between Roseanne and Darlene’s daughter, the rebellious Harris.
Roseanne and Harris had some truly nasty, mean-spirited fights in the revival. Even though Roseanne had once cried while apologizing to her son for slapping him, she showed no qualms about dunking Harris’s head in a sink full of dirty dishes decades later. To Roseanne, Harris was nothing but an ungrateful spoiled brat, a walking embodiment of the most toxic and inaccurate stereotypes associated with Generation Z. Since Roseanne died, she never got to see Harris become an independent, responsible adult running her own restaurant only a few years later. This character development was bittersweet in season 6’s finale.
Harris’s success didn’t just prove that Roseanne’s granddaughter was much more like her than she ever realized. Harris’s success at The Lunchbox also hinted at The Conners season 6 subverting Roseanne’s oldest story by giving the family a break when it comes to their persistent financial struggles. Harris managed to turn around the failing restaurant that Roseanne spent the original series working in, but Darlene’s mother wasn’t there to see this incredible achievement.
Roseanne’s sister Jackie ran The Lunchbox for years after acquiring it from her mother Bev, but she was never able to make the place a success. She even referred to the restaurant as an albatross around the neck of the titular family when she agreed to hand control over to Harris. Darlene’s daughter turning the place around is further proof that she shares Roseanne’s pluck, grit, and determination. This only makes it more tragic that Roseanne’s heroine never lived to see these events transpire, something that The Conners season 6 finale didn’t shy away from in its moving story.
