Roseanne: What You Need to Remember About How the Original Series Ends
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When Roseanne went off the air, the final season — especially the two-part series finale — was controversial because it made major changes to characters that had been canon for nine seasons. The revival is no different in courting a little controversy, as it's basically erasing season nine of the show. In the series finale, it is revealed that Roseanne has actually been writing a novel all these years and that while the characters on the show are real, she has been taking liberties with their lives in order to make a better story.
This retcon (a plot device that retroactively changes the events of a movie or TV show) changed the characters so that the Conners have never won the lottery, Darlene is actually with Mark and Becky is actually with David, Jackie is gay instead of Roseanne's mother being gay, and Dan actually did die of a heart attack a year prior to the series finale. The revival is doing away with almost all of that. For instance, it isn't reversing the lottery thing so that the Conners are now rich — they are still the working-class family they always were. But the other things are reverting back to the way they were throughout the original run.
With that in mind, here's where everyone was when the show ended the first time around.
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Roseanne
In season five, Roseanne becomes co-owner of The Lunchbox with Leon Carp. In season nine, she turns over complete ownership to Leon after winning the lottery. Since the lottery win turns out to not have happened, it's unclear if she continued as the Lunchbox's co-owner until retirement, but it sounds like Dan and Roseanne are semi-retired when the show picks up.
In season eight, Roseanne gives birth to the Conners' fourth child, a boy named Jerry Garcia. He is not in the revival's first season, but it has been revealed that he's working on a fishing boat in Alaska.
At the 2018 TCA Winter press tour, Barr also revealed that in episode three of the revival, Dan builds her a writing room and she's pursuing her writing career again.
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Dan
Dan's alive! This is a huge change from the original ending, as Roseanne very clearly states in the series finale that he actually died of a heart attack a year earlier. The revival winks at that, but it never really comes out and explains anything — because what could the explanation possibly be?
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Becky
Prior to the series finale that reveals she ends up with David, which has been erased by the revival, Becky is unsure about her marriage to Mark and is considering going to college. The series finale also reveals she is expecting, although that appears to have been erased as well.
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Mark
At the end of the original series, Mark is married to Becky (the series finale notwithstanding) and they are expecting. In the revival, Mark is deceased. We don't know what happened to him — presumably that will be revealed in the revival's nine-episode first season — but the show's creators told me at press tour that they didn't see any other way to handle the character of Mark in light of actor Glenn Quinn's death in 2003.
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Darlene
The Conners' middle child marries David and gives birth to a baby girl, Harris, at the end of the original series. (Harris is all grown up now!) The reveal that she is actually married to Mark has been erased, so in the revival, Darlene and her two children are back in Roseanne and Dan's house. We don't yet know what happened to Darlene and David's marriage.
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David
When the series ended, David and Darlene are married and have an infant daughter. David is working as a graphic artist and their relationship seems as solid as ever, so it'll be interesting to find out what happened to them in the ensuing years. David will only be in one episode of the revival's first season, since Johnny Galecki is busy starring on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
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D.J.
At the end of the original series, D.J. meets his soulmate Heather at a video store and then the series finale reveals he goes to college. That has all been erased as well. When the show returns, D.J. is in the military (though home from his tour of duty) and has a daughter, Mary, with his wife, Geena, who is also in the military and still on active duty overseas. Incidentally, Geena is the adult version of the African-American girl D.J. is uncomfortable kissing in the season seven episode, "White Men Can't Kiss."
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Jackie
Since the series finale has been erased, Jackie is presumably heterosexual. From season five on, she co-owned the Lunchbox with Roseanne and Leon, but it's not clear how long that continued. During the original series, she was also a police officer for a while, and at one point, married her boyfriend, Fred, and gave birth to son, Andy. After a year, Jackie and Fred divorced, so we don't know if he'll be a part of the revival at any point. Eventually we may hear about what her son is up to, but Andy is not addressed in the revival's first season.