Why The Conners Hasn’t Been Renewed For Season 3 Yet

ben darlene the conners season 2 finale abc 2020

The Conners wrapped up its second season last night with Dan, Becky and Darlene facing some major crossroads in their lives, one of which could actually get a member of our favorite snarky family into some serious legal trouble. So, the last thing we need is to not be able to continue these stories into Season 3. Fans have been wondering just what the hold up is to The Conners getting that official greenlight, and now we know where the process stands right now.

Fans are still all-in on The Conners. While the show isn't nabbing ratings quite as high as the one-season Roseanne revival which brought the gang back together, the working class family sitcom still ranks as ABC's most watched comedy this season, so you can bet that the network doesn't want to let a good thing go, especially now that it's lost the long-running hit Modern Family. According to The Conners executive producer Bruce Helford, the proceedings are just taking a little bit of time

They’re just ironing things out. Obviously, there are new question marks because of what’s going on and how we all do this [in the era of COVID-19]. ABC definitely wants us back and we want to come back. The four core actors [i.e. Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson] have already signed their deals.

As Bruce Helford noted during his talk with TVLine, obviously one of the big questions now is just when everything will be able to begin filming again, especially since there are some cast members (like John Goodman with The Righteous Gemstones and Emma Kenney, who still has Shameless) who are also lined up to do other shows which now have their schedules up in the air, too. But, the good news is that all of the main cast we'll expect to see on a weekly basis when Season 3 does finally come around has already signed off on their deals.

So, what could still need to be ironed out at this point? We learned around mid-April that Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, and Lecy Goranson would be coming back for a 19 episode Season 3, so with those main pieces in place, it would seem like renewing The Conners would be no problem. Well, it was at the same time that we found out that the show's production company, Werner Entertainment, was still trying to work out a license-fee deal with ABC. Conversations for that were already happening at the time, though, so, hopefully, we'll see that get finalized so that next season can be officially announced.

Even though The Conners was renewed for Season 2 in late March of last year, it appears that there's no need to worry about the comedy continuing for at least another season at this point. ABC is known for its comedies, so it's a pretty good bet that those at the network will do everything possible to keep a show as popular as The Conners around for as long as the cast is willing to bring us one of television's most reliably downtrodden families.

While you wait for word on The Conners Season 3, be sure to check out what's coming to Netflix, everything that's new to Hulu this month, and take a look at what will be on the TV schedule this summer!

Adrienne Jones
Senior Content Creator

Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism.