‘Roseanne’ Reboot: Dan’s Resurrection Has Tongues Wagging About How He Died


Roseanne is the title of a show that went off the air decades ago, but with the extreme buzz that came along with the news of its reboot, you would swear it was just on hiatus between seasons. While Roseanne Barr is the star of this show, which is also titled after her name, it seems John Goodman, who played Dan Conner on the 1990s series, is the guy folks can’t wait to see.

Much confusion surrounds the final season of Roseanne, which saw the rather crass, but lovable Conner family go through some major transitions. The demise of Goodman’s character, Dan Conner, is at the head of the confusing line of questions when it was learned the show was coming back with all its characters intact.

Now that 20 years have passed since Dan and Roseanne Conner last graced the TV sets throughout the nation’s living rooms, people are at odds about just what happened in the final season and finale of the show. Time has skewed many memories of just how that show ended.

There’s no debate that Dan is dead, but how he died has some folks at odds. Dan died after having a heart attack. In the show, he recuperated from that heart attack, but that was all part of Roseanne’s alternate reality to deal with the death of the man she had been with since middle school days.

The debate is on about just how Dan died and what really happened to the Conner family when seeing them living in the lap of luxury with millions in lottery winnings. According to the latest reports, the Roseanne reboot will continue on with the family as if nothing ever happened.

Each family member is signed and accounted for, so the gang is all here, or will be when the Roseanne reboot airs next year. That is except for the character of David. While reports still put Johnny Galecki in talks to reprise his role, there will be a David with or without Galecki, and that can easily be explained with age setting in if a new character is needed.

In the show’s finale, Roseanne narrated a few lines explaining that what the fans of the show had experienced during season 9 was nothing more than a figment of her imagination. She needed to imagine life this way because when Dan died the day of that wedding, she couldn’t go on without him. According to Uproxx, Roseanne Barr’s words that were narrated by her in the finale went as follows.

“My writing’s really what got me through the last year after Dan died. I mean at first, I felt so betrayed as if he had left me for another women. When you’re a blue-collar woman and your husband dies it takes away your whole sense of security. So I began writing about having all the money in the world and I imagined myself going to spas and swanky New York parties just like the people on TV, where nobody has any real problems and everything’s solved within 30 minutes. I tried to imagine myself as Mary Richards, Jeannie, That Girl. But I was so angry I was more like a female Steven Segal wanting to fight the whole world.”

Despite the news that the events that happened in the Roseanne finale will be ignored, that’s not going to happen completely, according to ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey. He did say that Dan is going to be alive in the reboot of the show.

But for answers to the rest of the fans’ questions on where they will start off with this show and where the character’s storylines are today that’s a waiting game. They will just have to wait and see how they handle bringing back Roseanne, which was a show that bowed out without leaving an escape hatch for a possible continuance somewhere down the line.

Folks across the social media sites made it very clear early on about their thoughts on Dan once the rumors first started that Roseanne will make a comeback with a new eight-episode series. The fans wanted Dan Conner, and without him, it just wouldn’t be the Roseanne show of yesteryear.

Once it was official and that eight-series season was in the works, people expressed their confusion around how they will pull off Dan being resurrected. His final act was one that doesn’t have a comeback unless you delve into the paranormal.

In another article offered by Uproxx, Dungey said about the creation of the Roseanne reboot.

“We had a lot of conversations with [executive producer] Tom Werner when he first came in to talk about doing the show,” said Dungey. “We’ve now heard the broad strokes of the creative for these 8 episodes, and feel confident that it’s going to return to the show that everyone knew and loved.”

Us Weekly has Dan Conner’s death from the Roseanne show as the first one on their “TV’s Most Shocking Deaths” list. They explain how he suffered the heart attack in a scene that is captured below in a video. They also suggested how the “twist” of his death not being revealed until the show’s final episode was a twist like no other in TV show finales.

As far as fans of the Roseanne show go, it is not just the baby boomers who are excited about the return. Roseanne has conjured up new generations of fans through reruns and through all the different “On-Demand” features from various cable and satellite carriers.

[Featured Image by Jaguar PS/Shutterstock]

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