Every Roseanne And The Conners Series Finale Ranked

Few shows get to have a single impactful series finale, let alone three. But fans of "Roseanne" and its continuation, "The Conners," know the franchise has pulled off a hat trick, creating a trio of memorable goodbyes to its audience, two of them preplanned and one a conclusion derived from scandal. Those endings have taken on different shapes, from a complete reimagining of the show's most recent years to a tender fourth wall-breaking salute to the fans and an episode that unintentionally foreshadowed one character's death. Each conclusion has been unique to the one that preceded it, standing out in ways that some fans have hated and others have adored.

Which of the three finales stands head and shoulders above its brethren as the strongest? Which one is the weakest? And which one lands right in the middle of the pack? Here's a ranking of every single finale the "Roseanne" universe has treated its viewers to, ranked from worst to best.

You might not know it, but every "Roseanne" series finale has proved itself consequential, though not in ways the show's writers could have ever foreseen when they wrote them. The 2018 finale of "Roseanne" — which would relaunch the following fall as "The Conners" sans the titular star after Roseanne Barr was fired for making a racist tweet  — helps set up the demise of Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) by focusing on her knee surgery.

The episode, "Knee Deep," sees Roseanne go to the hospital and grapple with her own mortality as she prepares to go under. While she makes it out of the operating room alive, between seasons she develops an addiction to painkillers prescribed to her after her surgery. Roseanne then overdoses on those pills offscreen and dies during the first episode of "The Conners," devastating her family. The writers' room definitely didn't plan on that when they wrote the finale, but "Knee Deep" does a great job of setting that plot point up.

"Knee Deep" also sees Darlene Conner (Sara Gilbert) give up waitressing to go back to journalism. It's a career path she continues to follow when "The Conners" kicks off, leading her to her second husband, Ben Olinsky (Jay R. Ferguson). It's definitely a momentous episode, but "Knees Deep" doesn't have the sentimental punch it needs to make it the franchise's best finale.

"The Conners" concludes with a wonderful mix of sentiment and humor, refusing to get too soppy, which instead allows its ending to have weight and purpose. "The Truck Stops Here" sees Dan (John Goodman) give testimony in a class action lawsuit against the drug company that made the pain pills Roseanne overdosed on. His season-long battles with indecision and Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) over what's right end up netting the family a whopping $700. What can they do but laugh about it?

The rest of the Conners have a slightly better time of it, with Darlene and Ben fixing their marital woes, Dan convincing Louise (Katey Sagal) that she's still important to him, and Becky and Tyler (Sean Astin) taking another step forward in their relationship and considering combining households. Jackie receives the best news of all, as she manages to jump the last hurdle barring her from rejoining the Lanford Police Department. While a few important characters get their endings in the previous episode, including Mark (Ames McNamara), the finale –and its last poignant moment, which ends with a perfect line from Goodman – is beautiful and memorable.

Some may consider it to be one of the worst finales of all time, and it may have been completely erased from the series' canon by the "Roseanne" reboot. But the final episode of the original run of "Roseanne" deserves credit as the franchise's best finale — not because of how bafflingly weird it is, but because of the cultural impact it left behind and how creatively gutsy it is.

It's undeniably audacious to undo everything you think you know about a family in the last ten minutes of a show, and that's exactly what part two of "Into That Good Night" does. The final season of the first "Roseanne" run sees the family win the lottery and cope with the slings and arrows that can come with ridiculous fortune. The show seems to end with everyone happy, satisfied, and rich — only to pan around the Conner family table and reveal the truth of it all.

It turns out Roseanne fictionalized the entire final season to cope with Dan's death from a heart attack at Darlene's wedding, writing it into a novel. She also made extreme changes to events that happened earlier in the show to help her stomach reality. For instance, she wrote Jackie as straight instead of gay and married Darlene off to David (Johnny Galecki) and Mark (Glenn Quinn) off to Becky (Lecy Goranson) even though the couples paired up differently in the show's "real-life" continuity. The series ends with a lonely Roseanne contemplating the creative process — a more fitting representation of Roseanne Barr's long struggle with the show's writing staff and the act of birthing this sitcom itself could not exist.