'The Conners' Celebrates Season 3 Renewal, and Fans Join the Fun

ABC renewed The Conners, the Roseanne sequel series, for a third season on Thursday. The news was [...]

By Daniel S. Levine - May 21, 2020 09:09 pm EDT

ABC renewed The Conners, the Roseanne sequel series, for a third season on Thursday. The news was met with an enthusiastic response from fans, especially following this month's Season 2 finale. The show features John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert, Lecy Goranson and Michael Fishman in the roles they originated on Roseanne.

On Thursday, ABC renewed 13 shows for the 2020-2021 television season, including The Conners. The other renewed shows are American Housewife, Stumptown, The Goldbergs, black-ish, A Million Little Things, mixed-ish, The Rookie, The Bachelor, Dancing With The Stars, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and 20/20. Grey's Anatomy, Station 19, The Good Doctor, American Idol and America's Funniest Home Videos were previously renewed as well. ABC also picked up two new shows, David E. Kelley's Big Sky and the Kyra Sedgwick sitcom Call Your Mother.

The Conners wrapped up its second season on May 5, with Becky's (Goranson) baby daddy Emilio (Rene Rosado) re-entering the U.S. illegally. Darlene (Gilbert) and Ben (Jay R. Ferguson) are also facing new challenges when they needed to use money they were saving up to buy a house with to help Dan (Goodman). Dan and Louise (Katey Sagal) will also face challenges in their relationship.

'So awesome!'

Yay!!! So awesome!
— Chas (@Momnwife73) May 21, 2020

In a post-season interview with TVLine, executive producer Bruce Helford acknowledged that there are always challenges putting new seasons of the show together since so many of the stars have other gigs. For example, Sagal signed on to star in an ABC pilot titled Rebel, which has been put on the backburner due to the coronavirus pandemic. Sagal will still be doing more Conners episodes, but "we don't know what her complete availability will be," he explained.

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'Congrats to that whole crew!'

Awesome! Congrats to that whole crew!
— Ken Johnson (@KJohnson4791) May 21, 2020

As for the romantic relationship, Helford and co-creators Bruce Rasmussen and Dave Caplan said they did have to slowly convince Goodman that giving Dan a new love interest would be a good idea. "John has lived with that character for so long," Caplan explained. "He's so deep into Dan that he has an internal metronome about how fast things should go and we wanted to respect that. So we talked to him and made sure that he understood how fast we thought we could go and wanted to make sure he was on board with that."

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'Bring it all for Season 3!'

ALRIGHT! 👏
Congratulations everyone on your team effort toward a fantastic, relevant & reassuringly Conners' humorous 2nd season: BRING IT ALL for SEASON 3, let's gooooo!
— Debbie Eastep (@DLeastep) May 21, 2020

The Conners was born in October 2018, following the success of the Roseanne revival that aired earlier that year. ABC fired Roseanne Barr due to her controversial tweets, but the network searched for a new way to keep the Conner family on-air. Helford, Rasmussen and Caplan, with the co-operation of the remaining cast, put together a show following their lives after Roseanne's off-screen death.

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