Light spoilers for Roseanne below, if you're worried about that kind of thing!
The Roseanne [1] reboot already had people talking when photos were released from the set [2] that seemed to confirm John Goodman would reprise his role as Dan Conner, but the details of exactly how the show would address Dan's resurrection after killing off his character [3] in the original series finale [4] was kept under wraps . . . until now. After watching the premiere episode, we can confirm exactly how Roseanne addresses what Goodman once referred to as the "silly" and "irrelevant" death [5] of his beloved character.
To refresh your memory, Dan suffers a fatal heart attack at Darlene (Sara Gilbert) and David's (Johnny Galecki) wedding in season nine of the show. Although he is alive in the 10th and final season (he also has an affair), Roseanne later reveals that Dan was dead all along in the series finale, having passed away from the heart attack.
The elephant in the room is immediately addressed in the first few minutes of the reboot, as we find Roseanne in bed with Dan, who's wearing a CPAP mask. "I thought you were dead!" Roseanne shouts after calling out to him a few times and waking him from his slumber. "I was sleeping! Why does everyone always think I'm dead?" Dan quips, before Roseanne responds, "You looked happy — I thought maybe you moved on."
It all happens in such a casual — yet hilarious — way that it's almost hard to be upset at the writers for bringing him back from the dead in such a nonchalant manner. Sometimes the best way to address an awkward situation is with laughter, and the show does just that with Dan's bizarre death. Later on in the episode, there's another joke made by Dan about how Roseanne's book, which we learn she was writing in the original series finale, would have sold more copies if she wouldn't have killed off the most interesting character.
With the topic of Dan's death out of the way early on, the show is able to dive into touchy subjects like politics [7], surrogacy [8], and gender identity [9] and quickly remind us why it was once the show that topped TV's must-watch list.