This article contains spoilers from the And Just Like That series finale.
And just like that…And Just Like That is over.
After a surprise announcement earlier this month that HBO Max’s Sex and the City sequel series would come to a conclusion with season 3, the second half of the big two-part finish dropped Thursday night. The ending of the Thanksgiving episode left Sarah Jessica Parker‘s Carrie Bradshaw embracing singlehood once again with no guarantees of ever finding a partner later in life.
Dancing alone in her spacious duplex to Barry White playing off the karaoke machine Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) bought, New York’s favorite fictional single girl finalizes the epilogue to her first fiction novel: “The woman realized she was not alone — she was on her own.” The music then switches to the original Sex and the City opening and closing jingles as the credits begin to roll.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly ahead of airing, series creator Michael Patrick King says he found himself thinking a lot about the original Sex and the City finale while coming up with the season 3 finish. In that episode from 2004, Carrie says in narration, “The most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well…that’s just fabulous.”
Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max
“That was the sort of mission statement of Sex and the City,” King says. “The interesting trick to it is she then answered a phone call from a man who was coming to be with her [Chris Noth‘s Mr. Big]. It always was in my mind, What happens if there’s no phone call? How strong of an individual do you have to be to make that same sentence when there’s no one on the horizon?”
In the And Just Like That season 3 writer’s room, Carrie’s epilogue, “she was on her own,” became a response to the Sex and the City ending. “It’s like an answer, it’s a callback, it’s an echo,” he says. “All these years later, she’s finally at the place where she sees that that is true. You’re not alone, even if you have no one. You’re on your own. That’s when I knew we were gonna wrap it up.”
Despite some reports of declining viewership, King says it was purely “a creative decision” to end the series there. “We did everything we wanted to do fully for that expression of the individual versus society. Each of the relationships is in a place where you can fan-fiction the rest of it yourselves.”
At that point, King turned to Parker and relayed the decision to stop the show, which he says was similar to the way he broke the news of Sex and the City ending. “I said to her, ‘I think it’s time to stop,'” he recalls. “And she said, ‘Then we stop.'”
Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max
King first announced the news of And Just Like That ending on the first of August, about a week before season 3’s 11th episode was to air. It came with word that the final episode would be split into two half-hour installments, bringing the total to 12.
Stars, including Parker, Nixon, and Kristin Davis (Charlotte), then began saying their goodbyes on social media. Among a lengthy, poetic response, Parker wrote, “Carrie Bradshaw has dominated my professional heartbeat for 27 years. I think I have loved her most of all.”
On the decision to hold the news of season 3 being the final season until this moment, King admits he didn’t want the headlines to be only about that.
Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max
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“When we were about to do press, I didn’t want to have a conversation,” he explains. “I didn’t want all the ladies and me to be saying, ‘Well, it’s over.’ I really didn’t want to have a conversation about why something was ending as we were beginning it. It just becomes the headline. It’s the only thing on the menu: the final season. That works ’cause it gets eyes on it, but also it takes away a bit of an emotional commitment to something from the audience. They’re like, ‘Well, why am I getting involved? It’s over.’ I really wanted people to get involved, and they did.”
He also didn’t want the word “final season” to hang over the characters of Carrie and Aidan (John Corbett) in particular. When King announced the end of And of Just Like That, he says, “A lot of people said this: ‘How are they gonna get [Carrie] together with somebody by the end?’ Like the only happy ending is Carrie with someone. People immediately started lobbying for Duncan [Jonathan Cake]. Sex and the City‘s original DNA is, no, you don’t have to be with someone. You can be with yourself or you can be with your girlfriends and maybe they’re your soulmates.”
The And Just Like That series finale is streaming now on HBO Max.
