The Conners: How the show killed off Roseanne

Roseanne Conner met her end off-screen in the premiere of The Conners, and we tell you how it was explained.

Note: We mean, it should be the most obvious spoiler post ever, but just so you can’t say we didn’t warn you, yes, there are big spoilers here about the series premiere of The Conners.

Actors leave TV series all the time, and often the shows go on. In the case of Roseanne, things were a bit different. Having the show without Roseanne Barr was obviously a big deal — big enough that it needed to be renamed The Conners without here — as was the fact that she did not leave of her own accord for well-reported reasons we don’t need to rehash here.

In any case, there was a zero percent chance that the premiere of The Conners, “Keep on Truckin,” would be able to avoid the elephant in the room, and it did not, dealing with the death of Roseanne Conner directly. The episode actually began weeks after she passed, with her family believing she simply died of a heart attack.

However, in a nod to a subplot from what ended up as the final season of Roseanne, it was revealed her real cause of death was an overdose of prescription painkillers, something it was established she was taking last year. Her sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) was the one who had to break the news to the rest of the Conner family.

It had been rumored during the time the show was retooling that opioids would end up being tied to Roseanne’s death, and tying it into an existing storyline made it a more organic choice than nearly any other way to write the main character out of the show. The ratings should be very interesting to watch, as it’s natural to expect that people would tune in for the premiere out of curiosity but an open question about whether they will stick around now that Roseanne is, indeed, gone.