‘The Conners’ EPs Explain Big Season 7 Roseanne Storyline — Could It Lead to Her Return?

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Conners” Season 7, Episode 1.

“The Conners” kicked off its seventh and final season with an eventful episode that brought Roseanne’s death back into the forefront. Could that signal a potential comeback for Roseanne Barr herself before the series comes to a close?

The ABC comedy series — famously spun-off from the short-lived ratings juggernaut “Roseanne” reboot after Barr was fired for racist tweets — is set to end its run with a six-episode farewell event. Wednesday’s premiere set the stage for a potential legal battle in the Conner family’s future, as Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) hoped to get the rest of the clan on board to pursue a lawsuit against the opioid company that manufactured the drugs that her sister accidentally overdosed on at the start of the spinoff series. The sitcom’s Season 7 premiere spinoff ended with Jackie and Dan (John Goodman) at a serious impasse, with him hesitating to dig up all the pain from his wife’s death but with Jackie urging him to help her seek justice.

“The Supreme Court handed us a storyline when they took away the immunity from all the opioid companies,” executive producer Bruce Helford told TheWrap.

“That storyline ticked a lot of boxes for us, and one of them was that the little guy finally gets some justice. We’ll see how that gets resolved in the last episode,” executive producer Dave Caplan added.

Indeed the producers had a tough task in wrapping up the story of the Conners, which encompasses two Roseanne shows, one spinoff and 37 years of TV history.

Helford said the “Roseanne” reboot was originally planned as a one-season celebration of the original series that would course-correct the sitcom’s much scrutinized final season. The show’s stellar ratings, however, made it prime for a Season 2 renewal in 2018. Then Barr’s tweets about Valerie Jarrett got her fired, which led to the producers bringing the team together without the titular star in “The Conners.”

Seven seasons later, “The Conners” will end its run in a very different America. So could Barr end up making one last appearance to close the show?

“We aren’t bringing anybody back from the dead,” Helford said, referencing old “Roseanne” plotlines that brought Dan back from the dead for the reboot. When pressed if Barr could return in ghost-form, Helford said, “Well, I didn’t say not, but yeah,” keeping it cryptic.

Below, “The Conners” producers talk about crafting the family’s heartfelt goodbye and more.

TheWrap: The premiere sets up a lot of great stuff to come in this six-episode farewell. How did you approach writing how this beloved TV family says goodbye this time around?

Bruce Helford: When we did the “Roseanne” reboot, the idea was to do one season just to finish off the original “Roseanne” in a better way than the lottery and all that stuff. Then that blew up and we had to do a new show. We thought we’d do another year to clear up the legacy of that mess. I tell you, we never expected it to go seven years. We were very happy that it went that way. But every year we had no contracts. Every year we had to decide whether we wanted to continue doing it or not, and we all decided to keep doing it each year. We were having fun and felt that the work was of quality. But we knew that there had to be a time, ultimately, where it had to come to an end.

So then we put our heads together… How do we want to be remembered? That was the original purpose. And also how to make this a six-episode event. A lot of times people just tune in for the last episode. We wanted this to be something special. So it’s six episodes that are all linked very carefully.

Dave Caplan: It was daunting to try to resolve the arcs of all the Conner characters in six episodes … But we did feel like there were big questions for especially the four main characters that had to be resolved. So we understood the marching orders, and we just had to get it done in six.

Last time the Conner family said goodbye on TV was with the much-scrutinized final season of the original “Roseanne.” How much creative liberty did you give yourselves this time around?

Helford: We didn’t take that much liberty … Every season, we prepare these long arcs. And we always leave the end with something cliffhanging. So we had a lot of chickens that had to come home to roost. We had built it in a way to ultimately do this someday, and I think we stayed within the parameters of the realities that we created.

Caplan: We wanted the six to be a big event, but we didn’t want to have anything artificial about it where we pulled in something brand new out of left field to create extra drama. There was enough drama inherent in how the lives of these characters were going to end up. And that was more than enough for us to write from.

Helford: And the Supreme Court handed us a storyline when they took away the immunity from all the opioid companies. So we thought this family would definitely try to take advantage of that.

Indeed the Conner family starts the season with a big impasse, as Jackie and Dan argue about whether to pursue legal action against an opioid company for Roseanne’s accidental overdose. Why bring that storyline to the surface now?

Caplan: We set out to figure out an ending that would honor the creation of the original show and the reboot and “The Conners,” and the Roseanne character was a big part of all of that.

It was a way to pay homage and try to cement that legacy for the family. And you know, “The Conners” was, to a large degree, about them dealing with the death of their matriarch. So it was painful to bring it up again for them, but it also provided a kind of complete closure that maybe they didn’t have before.

Darlene (Sara Gilbert) and Ben (Jay R. Ferguson) are clearly facing some distance in their relationship, and we know Seth Green is coming in later on to possibly throw a wrench on the marriage. Should we be worried for them?

Helford: I would worry about all of the Conners. They don’t always make the best decisions. (laughs)

Caplan: When everybody’s working, it’s hard on relationships, and Ben and Darlene are no exception. Ben’s working to get a business started. And little companies are the backbone of the entire American economy. But everybody that’s had a little business knows it’s hard. And it’s hard on relationships.

I love that Jackie is going to try to return to her former job in the Lanford PD. But I especially loved seeing Laurie Metcalf’s daughter Zoe Perry in the role of her potential new partner/nemesis. How did that on-screen pairing come about?

Helford: We always wanted to have Zoe do something on the show, but she was busy with this, that and the other. And when this came up, it was like, “What about Zoe?” And for me, I’m always like well, I don’t know how actors feel about working with their family on the show. But they were totally game for it and totally up for it.

It was just interesting to watch them interact. At the end of each scene, Zoe would just giggle and point at her mom and go “My God, this woman!” Each time. It was like, she was just aware that she’s just really funny.

Caplan: It was Bring Your Daughter to Work Day so it worked out great!

Will Zoe stick around?

Caplan: She comes back again. We would take Zoe as much as we can get her, because she and Laurie … that chemistry, you can’t duplicate.

Helford: They got a kick out of working together, too. It was fun. I don’t know if they had ever worked together before.

Is production all done for the final season? How was it to say goodbye?

Helford: October and November we wrapped. And then there was obviously editing and things like that… We all had our moments during the course of the six episodes. Some people started getting emotional early. Some people didn’t really till the very final moment. But it was hard. Everybody was in a certain amount of, honestly, denial. Because it felt like the show could go on forever. It did not feel tired in any way. It was really easy for us to come up with new storylines and all that. But everything does ultimately have to run its course, and so this was the natural place to do it. It was very emotional, very emotional for us.

Caplan: Think about how long not only that cast has been together, but a lot of our crew came from the early “Roseanne” show, so the people on stage have been together for a very long time, like and for it to come to an end was pretty traumatic.

Helford: A bunch of them from the original, from the very first episode of “Roseanne.” People would work out on that show all the way through.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

“The Conners” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT and streams the next day on Hulu.

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