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When HBO confirmed that And Just Like That would quietly wrap after Season 3, the internet let out a collective sigh of relief. Critics had long derided it as a clunky sequel, fans grumbled about character assassinations, and even casual viewers admitted it lacked the fizzy alchemy of the original Sex and the City.
Beneath the designer chaos, still, the finale may have delivered something unexpected: it gave Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte (and, in turn, us) the ending they had been destined to have from the very beginning.
It’s an unpopular opinion, but maybe And Just Like That wasn’t a misstep. Maybe it was the perfect, if imperfect, sendoff.
The characters never really changed that much
Carrie’s behavior in her 50s (impulsive, emotionally messy, and prone to questionable men) was fairly consistent with her Sex and the City self. This is the woman who was dumped on a Post-it, dated a sex addict, and bought Manolos instead of groceries.
Of course she’d end up alone in a cavernous apartment she bought for Aidan. That’s very Carrie!
Charlotte, too, is still clinging to perfection. From Trey to Harry, she always wanted the glossy frame of family life. Now in middle age, she’s juggling teenagers, Botox, and a curated social media version of motherhood. Overblown? Sure. But she’s a parody of herself...and wasn’t she always?
And Miranda (eternally torn between head and heart) hasn’t lost her contradictions either. From obsessing over soap operas to sabotaging relationships when threatened, her midlife detour into new love and self-discovery feels less like a rewrite and more like a continuation. Messy? Yes. But Miranda has always been messy in a very different, very human way.
And Just Like That is a consequence
The genius of And Just Like That (if you squint!) lies in its refusal to preserve the women in amber. Twenty years have passed. These characters were never “relatable” in the first place; they were elite Manhattanites with first-world problems sipping on cosmopolitans.
What the sequel does is force them to reckon with aging, grief, and decades-old choices. Big is gone, leaving Carrie with wealth but no direction.
Miranda is stumbling out of a long marriage that was more convenience than passion. Charlotte is still chasing ideals but finding herself exhausted by their upkeep. Even the absence of Samantha rings true: sometimes friendships don’t survive distance and decades. Painful, yes, but honest.
Thus, And Just Like That becomes less of a reboot and more of a reckoning. It dares to show what happens when happily-ever-after ages into midlife.
The And Just Like That finale was closure enough
The last scene (Carrie alone, dancing in her townhouse, finally writing an epilogue that her most important relationship is with herself) was a callback to the Sex and the City finale. But this time, Big wasn't on the other end of the phone. No romantic safety net either. Just Carrie, almost 60, alone, and still uncertain.
And maybe that’s the point. Life doesn’t always tie itself up with a ribbon.
Sometimes the perfect ending is imperfect, and And Just Like That leaned into that discomfort. It wasn’t lightning in a bottle like Sex and the City, but it didn’t need to be. Instead, it gave us the raw acknowledgement that the women we fell in love with at 30 are not the same at 55. And neither are we.
And just like that, the goodbye felt right.
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Watch And Just Like That on Max.
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