‘The Conners’ Creators Unpack Show’s Emotional, Unscripted Ending: ‘It Was a Surprise to Us’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Conners” Season 7 Episodes 5 and 6.

“The Conners” have said goodbye after 15 seasons across three shows in 37 years.

The ABC sitcom, a spinoff born out of the cancellation of its megahit “Roseanne” reboot, wrapped its run Wednesday with a heartwarming finale that left the beloved TV family a little bit better than when we found them.

The six-episode Season 7 followed as Dan (John Goodman) and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) worked to sue the opioid company that provided the medication that ultimately led to Roseanne Conner’s accidental overdose. Meanwhile, each member of the Conner family dealt with significant growth, including Mark (Ames McNamara) using his hacking skills to land a good job in New York without going to college; Becky (Lecy Goranson) keeping with her sobriety and landing a good job; Darlene (Sara Gilbert) repairing her relationship with Ben (Jay R. Ferguson; and Jackie ending up back on the force.

The final scene of the series featured a pretty normal meeting of the Conner family in the family living room, only actors got more and more emotional as they said goodnight to Dan. Then in the end he broke the fourth wall and looked directly at the camera, saying good night while holding his own tears back.

“It was a surprise to us. We did not know they were going to get there emotionally,” executive producer Dave Caplan told TheWrap.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in a sitcom, or maybe even a drama, where the actors show the real emotions they are having. It was so touching and so real that we decided to leave,” executive producer Bruce Helford told TheWrap. “Dan saying goodbye to the audience, that was all John and it was wonderful.”

The finale also resolved the lawsuit with he opioid company, with Dan receiving a check for $700 after his deposition found that Roseanne was aware of the danger of the drugs she was on but continued to use them. That didn’t deter the family form moving forward however, so they celebrated their little win with a nice dinner.

“We worked pretty hard to avoid end of series cliches,” Caplan added. “There are traps that are easy to fall into, and we felt like out audience needed a more realistic version of where these characters would land at the end of the series, but still have a sense that they would go on with their lives.”

TheWrap spoke to the creators of “The Conners” about wrapping up the show’s legacy and if there could be more to come in the future.

TheWrap: How did you go about crafting where we’d leave these characters with this series finale?

Bruce Rasmussen: Well, we really wanted them to be like you said on the way up, but not in an unrealistic way, like winning a lottery.

Bruce Helford: We didn’t want to leave the audience in despair, especially nowadays.

Rasmussen: Everybody needs a boost.

Dave Caplan: All of the arcs of the characters, and you could even go all the way back to the original “Roseanne” show, we feel like it led us to these points. All of the things that they’ve been through sort of had a natural ending point for us. We don’t feel like we reached for anything. We feel like these are all natural conclusions of where these characters have gone, and for that reason, it feels honest to us.

I loved seeing Becky land a good job and keep her sobriety in check, especially with the joy she shared the news with her mother at the cemetery. A bit of a full circle moment for her given the tough spot we found her in at the start of the “Roseanne” reboot. How did you decide on that ending for her?

Rasmussen: She was always the smart one, and then we lost track of that as the show went on. And then the other Becky came in, when we saw the Sarah Chalke character, the way they wrote her she got a little bit goofier. Then when we did the reboot, we gave her the drinking problem. We put her through so much. For all three of us, I think we were like, “Let’s get back to who she was always meant to be.” And everybody’s been rooting for her so much.

Caplan: Even smart people end up going down emotional roads that are disasters for them. We really like the sense of realistic triumph that Becky has at the end of this. Even when she gets the great job she has a little bit of impostor syndrome. But through all of her emotional roller coasters, she persevered and ended up in a great place. I think that’s a pretty good, satisfying end for that character.

Helford: And we didn’t want her victory to be just because she found a man. We wanted it to be based on something that she herself accomplished.

Rasmussen: Lecy also said, “Can you please not marry me off?”

Mark ends up moving away and opts not to go to college but to use his hacking skills the right way. Why have him be the one Conner to leave Lanford?

Helford: Well, one thing is that one of the reasons he wasn’t in the finale was that he had to get going to school. He registered in Harvard. And also we wanted to make sure that his story had the full time to conclude it. We built so much to that moment, and didn’t want to squeeze it into the final episode with everything else that was going on.

Caplan: We did a lot of arcs where Mark was the great hope of the Conners to get out of generational poverty, and we always thought about, “How can we get him to an ivy league school so there’s hope at the end of “The Conners.” And then we started thinking, “Well, one way to subvert that is maybe it’s not college at all.” The decision to go to college is so much more complicated now than it used to be for a lot of young people. It was Darlene’s dream stick of her worth as a mom that she got her kid to a great school. So the twist that it might not be college and it might not be exactly what Darlene wanted for him, we thought was going to be really interesting to play with.

Helford: College was right for Becky, but it wasn’t necessarily right for Mark.

The insurance company ends up giving the family a small amount of money but they take it in stride. Could they have gotten more?

Helford: A lot of research was done for this. What happened to Dan in that interrogation is really what happened in a lot of the cases when they were able to prove that the person knew it was dangerous and still continued (to use opioids), then that person was no longer being jeopardized by the company. It’s still kind of ridiculous but that’s the way it played out in some of the courts. So we tried to follow what really would have probably happened, and this is probably what would have been the case. So many people, I’m sure, feel incredibly frustrated. They never got any justice, especially when the courts originally froze any lawsuits against the companies and gave them immunity — which was undone. This was a chance for everyone to voice, through John Goodman, through Dan, their frustration about what happened.

Rasmussen: It really comes down to what Dan says it is, “How much is a life worth? How much is her life worth?”

Caplan: We never really though about it being a big payoff, because the little guy doesn’t win. The lesson of “The Conners” is that if you think you’re going to get over on the big guy, it’s probably not going to happen. You’re going to have to struggle. But if you struggle and you hang together, good things can still happen. So it had to be an ending that kept in concert with the tone of “The Conners.”

Jackie ended up back on the police force. Kind of feels like the next great spinoff? Would you pursue any other spinoffs or are you done with the family for now?

Helford: We want the sincerity and the legacy of the finale to be noted. No one ever thought any of these things would come back. We started out to do one year of the reboot just to clean up the end of the “Roseanne” show. Then we had to clean up the end of the reboot, it just kind of kept itself going. But I think for right now, it’s a good time for one just to kind of appreciate 37 years of knowing this family, and 15 of those years actually on air, this cast, that was a very, very big thing for them to face, the end of that era.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

“The Conners” is available to stream on Hulu.

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