The news won’t have come as a shock to anyone brave enough to watch it, but season three of And Just Like That..., the Sex and the City spin-off, will be the show’s last.
It’s been a lame duck since the start, with lazy writing, tokenism and unlikable characters all adding to the absolute anticlimax after its much-hyped launch in December 2021.
AJLT picked up 11 years on from where SATC left off, with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon returning as Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda, respectively. Kim Catrall’s Samantha was mostly absent, apart from a fleeting – and again, much-hyped – cameo in season two.
But the show never found its feet.
Critics have called its three seasons divisive, cringe, sexist, awful and, in one recent Guardian story, “wildly incoherent, utterly flummoxing, blissful”.
Series executive producer Michael Patrick King announced on his Instagram on August 1 the current season would be its last.
“While I was writing the last episode of And Just Like That... season three, it became clear to me that this might be a wonderful place to stop,” he wrote.
Fans would argue that the most wonderful place would have been Sex and the City’s season six finale or, at a push, the first movie. But dreams don’t always come true, and the truly horrendous second SATC film will remain forever burned in our memories, like a permanent unsightly stain on one of Carrie’s most fabulous outfits.
But despite its criticisms, those who have grown up with Carrie and co as part of their cultural conversation are likely to feel a sense of sadness that – for now at least – that universe will be no more.
To mark the occasion, and before today’s final episode, we reflect on what Carrie has taught us over the years.
Carrie is the best of friends, the worst of friends.
No matter the conversation topic, she always finds a way to turn it back to herself. A Reddit thread titled “The worst thing Carrie’s ever done to her friends” has 133 answers alone. Examples: standing Miranda up for dinner with Big, dumping new friends in Paris for emotionally abusive boyfriend Aleksandr Petrovsky, lying to old friends about having an affair, bullying Charlotte into giving her money to buy an apartment.
When Charlotte gets engaged, Carrie, who has just been dumped by her boyfriend Berger by Post-It Note, effectively tells her friend to shut up because her experience is far more important.
Would we put up with this behaviour from our own friends? Would our friends put up with it from us?
Yes, actually.
Because the thing Carrie taught me about friendships is that they’re the actual loves of your life. Like a marriage – maybe even more than a marriage – you are there for your true friends through good times and bad, sickness and health. You accept their flaws, you call them out on their bulls***, you celebrate their successes as if they’re your own. And you depend on them to do the same for you.
One of my favourite lines from Sex and the City – and one female friends will often quote to each other after one too many Manhattans – is “maybe we could be each other’s soulmates? And then we could let men be just these great, nice guys to have fun with”.
Okay, that line came from Charlotte. Wait. This one, spoken by Carrie, in part one of the SATC season six finale also sums it up for me. She’s having dinner with Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte, before moving to Paris with Aleksandr.
“Today I had a thought,” she tells them. “What if I had never met you?”
The pause, the looks between the friends, the decades of history conveyed without need for any more words, never fails to make me cry.
Because where would we be without our very best friends and all their joyous, crazy, chaotic, infuriating, beautiful, incredible, inimitable ways?
That’s the best love story I could ever hope for.
– Stephanie Holmes
I was late to the SATC party and, even now, I have to double, triple check every time whether it is Sex AND the City or Sex IN the City. But perhaps it was just the universe helping to delay the making of some Very Bad Life Decisions.
Just at the point I was “finding myself”, trying to figure out my “vibe” or what I’d become, I was finally introduced to Carrie Bradshaw and her cute New York apartment, gorge wardrobe, and ability to spend (spend!) every night out at dinner and drinks… and all she had to do each week was tappity-tap-tap some words into a laptop. Sign. Me. Up.
Except, as it turns out, you should not take career inspo from a TV character. Rather than nights downing cosmos and bar snacks at chic clubs, I’m reheating leftovers and jazzing up my Soda Stream fizzy water while wearing an extra jumper so I can leave the heat pump off for another hour. But at least I still get to tappity-tap-tap words into a laptop, so she wasn’t completely unhinged. Cheers, Carrie!
– Bridget Jones
Carrie Bradshaw made writing look glamorous – even when it wasn’t. She showed me that your voice matters, despite being emotional, messy, or just about what you had for brunch. There’s power in telling your story, even when it’s just to make sense of your own gritty life. And there’s something liberating about wearing your chaos with confidence and owning your story, messy drafts and all. I learned how not to manage money from her. The woman bought $40,000 worth of shoes and couldn’t get a mortgage, a reminder that financial literacy is sexier than Manolos – no matter what Vogue says.
– Rosalie Liddle Crawford
Did anybody brunch before Sex and the City? I mean, we probably went to cafes and ordered scrambled or poached, but nobody considered their eggs like Carrie Bradshaw and Co. Those New York breakfast scenes were a group chat in prime time that normalised asking the big questions out loud and sans men. Modern viewers might question the ground-breaking status of a coffee and a conversation about sex positions, the price of shoes and how late is too late to have kids, but it’s worth remembering: Google hadn’t even publicly launched when the first episode screened.
– Kim Knight
The longest relationship I have in life is the relationship with myself. I need to make choices that serve me.
Carrie taught me to love myself with all my flaws, and to give myself a break. To not objectify myself or let the judgment of others get to me, just embrace my own little world, and work on myself.
A man doesn’t define me, nor does my job or my bank account.
Carrie embraces elements of imperfection and being a woman and makes me feel empowered and “enough”.
– Sarah Langford
As much as Carrie is ridiculed for her flaws and choice in men, her style is what takes centre stage for me – from her Manolo Blahniks proving to be her only consistent relationship, to making controversial capri pants look like the most obvious fashion choice.
With the revolving door of trends, Carrie’s style remains the core of my mood board, not just the clothes themselves but the feeling they inspire. Carrie has taught me that fashion is much more than fabric, it’s self-expression.
– Nicole Clements
Lately, I’ve been farewelling far too many friends flying towards new phases. To shed their past lives – and lighten their carry-on – they’ve thrown their wardrobes into total disarray. As a ritual, we’ve gathered around piles of clothing and claimed pieces we’d like to re-home. In Sex and the City: The Movie, the four friends do the same, drinking champagne and modelling with music blasting. Beyond the cheer of these last-minute dress-ups, I love the feeling of wearing these pieces: holding friendship close even when they’re far.
- Madeleine Crutchley
The final episode of And Just Like That... will be available to stream on Neon from 1pm today. All three seasons are available in full on Neon, as well as six seasons of Sex and the City.
The first SATC movie is available to stream on Prime Video or to rent from Apple TV Store. The second movie is probably available somewhere too, but is best avoided.