‘Roseanne’ Addresses Dan’s Death in New Trailer

A new trailer for the upcoming reboot season of Roseanne addressed Dan Conner’s death in the original series, and how the new show will get around it.

The trailer was shared by E! News, and you can watch it here. The footage is filled with behind the scenes shots of the new production. It includes video of a table read with the full cast, where Roseanne herself seems to address the non-canon death.

“Dan?” she says uncertainly.

“What?” says John Goodman.

“I thought you were dead!” Roseanne replies.

The show is going to have quite a job re-establishing what did and didn’t happen in reality. The original series ran for nine seasons, and at the end of the eighth, Dan Conner has a heart attack which nearly claims his life.

In the ninth season, the Conner family wins a $108 million state lottery. John Goodman was absent for long stretches of the season, as he was off filming The Big Lebowski. One of the plot lines throughout the season is that Dan is cheating on Roseanne. However, in the very last episode, it’s shown that the entire season was a short story written by Roseanne Conner herself.

The bombshell finale reveals that Dan Conner actually did die at the end of season 8, and that the affair was a coping mechanism Roseanne created to deal with her grief. Many other plot points turn out to have been a part of her fiction as well, which explains the surreal nature of the show’s final season.

When ABC announced the new Roseanne revival, many fans wondered how they’d deal with all of these ambiguous plot threads. Producers confirmed early on that Dan is not dead and that he will return. So far, there’s no official word on how exactly the show will define its own canon, but it looks like they’re taking a light-hearted approach to sorting it out on camera.

The classic sitcom‘s return promises to be a highly politicized television event. Roseanne represented a genuine look at working class people not often seen on TV, and it was lauded for that in the ’90s. The eponymous star, Roseanne Barr, has been under fire lately for her support of President Donald Trump. She’s had a few tense exchanges on Twitter, and fans worry that the controversial politics will affect the show’s comeback.

Only time will tell. The reboot will hit TV screens on Tuesday, March 27 on ABC.