The Conners is set to feature Justin Long as Darlene's boyfriend in the first season of the new series. It was previously announced that Johnny Galecki had joined the cast and that his love interest will be played by Juliette Lewis. John Goodman recently revealed that he and the cast were immediately ready to sign on for the new show after Roseanne Barr's racist tweet got the Roseanne revival series canceled. While it was a little awkward at first, the cast has been leaning on each other to carry on without their lead actress.

In addition to Justin Long, it has also been revealed that Steve Zahn will guest star on the show as a potential love interest for Jackie on the Halloween episode. According to the storyline, Jackie asks Dan to vet her possible new boyfriend, only to wish at the end that he hadn't. That's not a whole lot to go off of, but fans of the original Roseanne should be pretty excited to know that The Conners is carrying on the tradition of the epic Halloween episodes.

While Roseanne Barr's character will be killed off for The Conners, ABC has been keeping the promo material pretty upbeat. The latest 30-second teaser features one of America's favorite TV families doing what they do best, even without Barr on board to steer the ship. While fans understand the death of Barr's character, the comedian has a had a hard time coming to grips with the situation. She had this to say.

"It's so cynical and horrible. She should have died as a hero, or not at all... It wasn't enough to (fire me), they had to so cruelly insult the people who loved that family and that show."

Roseanne Barr may not like the idea of her character being dead in The Conners, but it was the most logical way for the show to continue. The Roseanne revival series pretty much perfectly set up a way for her to exit the show with an addiction to pain killers and an upcoming surgery. It's not like they could have had a running joke that she was continuously out driving Uber for an entire season, or to say that she left the family. Those scenarios would have put too much attention on her absence.

The main question in everybody's mind right now has to deal with the success of The Conners. Will the show be able to compete with the Roseanne revival in terms of ratings? According to early predictions, it won't do as well as the previous show, but that's to be expected. However, that doesn't mean that it won't be a success. Even if it was able to pull half of the ratings of the revival, it will still crush any competition. The Conners premieres on October 16th on ABC. The latest casting news was originally reported by Deadline.