Conners' premiere: How does Roseanne die?

Photo: Eric McCandless / ABC

Spoilers below for The conners first.

The world's poorest spoiler has arrived. Yes, The conners killed off Roseanne, and yes, she died of an overdose under analgesic, as said Roseanne Barr herself last month.

ABC Roseanne The spin-off, created after the dismissal of the network by Barr for his racist tweets, begins three weeks after the funeral of his character. The Conner family is still in mourning. Instead of continuing with the plot, as Kevin can wait done after killing the character of Erinn Hayes, The conners The story behind Roseanne's passage is therefore a key part of the episode.

At first, the Conners believe that Roseanne died of a sudden heart attack, but the coroner's office reveals that she has taken an overdose of pain medication. The series dealt with the character's reliance on painkillers during last year's rebirth when Roseanne developed a pill addiction after her knee surgery, but Darlene and Dan are still shocked by the news and say they did not realize how serious his problem was. While others react in the same way (when the characters talk about their poor knowledge of Roseanne), it sounds like a metatextual comment that actors do not know their co-star. Then, Becky discovers a bottle of pill that Roseanne has hidden in her closet with a prescription from "Marcy Bellinger," revealing that she has received her pills from someone else.

From there, Dan decides to accuse Marcy Bellinger of Roseanne's death and walks the streets of Lanford with a sign indicating his name. (Meanwhile, the other characters discover pills hidden in the freezer, indicating that Roseanne was not counting on one hiding place.) Then Marcy Bellinger herself shows up at the Conners' door – and surprise, surprise! – She is played by the great Mary Steenburgen.

Steenburgen then delivers a serious speech that suddenly makes The conners It sounds like a dark and acclaimed Broad Broadway play that talks about troubled America. Her character says that Dan's actions hurt her, that almost everyone in Lanford started selling drugs because no one had any insurance, that she did not know that Roseanne was addicted, and that she knew "what it is like to have this problem". A family member tells Dan that they found other painkillers hiding around the house and that he must accept that Marcy is not responsible for Roseanne's overdose. The episode ends when Dan falls asleep alone in his bed and in Roseanne's, tenderly making his place even if she is gone. It seems The conners has not finished with the death of Roseanne.