‘The Conners’ Won’t Tie Up Every Loose End, Warns Laurie Metcalf
With nine seasons of the original Roseanne, a reboot season in the 2010s and then seven more seasons of The Conners after Roseanne Barr was dismissed from her creation, plenty of characters and storylines have emerged over the decades. Now that The Conners is six episodes away from a series finale (?), Laurie Metcalf, who plays Jackie Harris, cautions viewers not to expect a tidy resolution to every subplot.
“There’s a lot to wrap up, and I think the writers are really working hard to get everybody’s storylines sort of ... not completed,” Metcalf told People during an onset visit. “It’s not going to have a big bow tied up with the Conners.”
Will everyone get a happily ever after? “It will remain true to their storyline, what happens to them in the final episode,” she explained. “But it’s a very short amount of time to wrap up this many seasons of a family that’s covered decades.”
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The Conner family has experienced huge-swing storylines in their past, such as the “final” Roseanne season in which they won the lottery, only to discover a year’s worth of stories were made up by Roseanne in a “it was just a dream” twist. But The Conners’ final episodes promise to be more grounded in reality.
The writers won’t be “doing something wacky or kind of culminating,” promises Lecy Goranson, who plays Becky Connor. “It’s just not really our style. Our show is about real people and real-life situations, so I feel like we don’t need to do that. It’s enough just saying that the characters are moving on in the future together as family.”
Six episodes don’t give the actors much time to say goodbye, which is making longtime cast members like Metcalf sentimental. “I might take my character’s jacket that I’ve had for 30 years, that I wear entering every scene that we do,” she admitted to On the Red Carpet.
“I really wish we could have done more,” said John Goodman, “but I am very grateful for what we have gotten to do.”
But will the Conner family ever really go away? They’ve risen from the television ashes before, and Goranson is already planting the seeds for the next generation of Conner stories, including a potential show that would follow the romance between Becky and boyfriend Tyler (Sean Astin). “I don’t want a break. I would love a spin-off,” she told Us Weekly. “I imagine that might be complicated, but I would love that. I love my colleagues so much and the crew.”
Many members of that crew have been part of the Roseanne-verse since the 1980s. Goranson set up a happy hour with the team to dream about what happens next. “We’re always saying, ‘How do we get together again? What’s our next project together?’” she explained. “It’s very sincere. We all feel this way.”
