Note: This story contains spoilers from “And Just Like That” Season 3, Episode 12.
“And Just Like That…” Carrie Bradshaw’s latest saga ended exactly as showrunner Michael Patrick King intended: With a bold statement about being alone and lots of life left to live.
Episode 12, titled “Party of One,” followed as Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) grappled with the possibility of spending the rest of her life alone. It’s an existential quandary most people face in their lifetime, regardless of age, and one that carries extra weight coming from television’s signature love expert for the past 27 years. After losing one love of her life at the start of the “Sex and the City” spinoff series and letting go of another near the end of its run, Carrie spent the final moments of the series finale celebrating herself — as the people in her life enjoyed their own joyful respite from life’s unpredictable shenanigans (and one very graphic overflowed toilet sequence).
The series ended with Carrie rewriting the end of the novel she’d been working on all season, her first foray into fiction: “The woman realized she was not alone, she was on her own.”
“That’s a really interesting response to the end of ‘Sex and the City,’ where she says the most significant relationship you have is the one you have with yourself, but she’s holding a phone and Mr. Big is calling to join her,” King told TheWrap of crafting the final moments of “And Just Like That.” “I always thought, the evolution of that is to realize, ‘I’m OK if maybe no one else is coming.’”
A good place to leave them
Beyond Carrie’s powerful statement on solitude, the finale followed as the “And Just Like That” ensemble went from initial plans to celebrate Thanksgiving at Miranda’s (Cynthia Nixon) to splintering off to individual celebrations with their families.
King said this was also by design, so as to not repeat himself from the large gathering in the Season 2 finale honoring Carrie moving out of her beloved New York apartment. But the show still emphasized Carrie as the group’s “connective tissue” when she delivered Thanksgiving pies to each of their homes during the episode, and viewers watched them enjoy the desserts as Carrie celebrated herself in her apartment as she listened to Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” in the show’s final moments.
Harry and Charlotte took advantage of his first erection since finishing cancer treatment before having dinner with their daughters. Miranda recovered from a chaotic dinner with her son Brady (Niall Cunningham) and his baby mama-to-be that ended with her cleaning up overflowed poop in her bathroom — certain that she’d build a relationship with her future grandchild and continue her relationship with new girlfriend Joy (Dolly Wells). LTW (Nicole Ari Parker) and her husband Herbert (Chris Jackson) re-committed to each other after flirting with cheating and a professional setback. And Seema (Sarita Choudhury) realized she was happy giving up gluten and the idea of a traditional marriage to embrace her newfound love Adam (Logan Marshall-Green), Carrie’s fancy gardener.
Even Anthony (Mario Cantone) and Giuseppe (Sebastiano Pigazzi) settle the uncertainty in their recent engagement, choosing to laugh through whatever comes their way next together.
Cynthia Nixon in “And Just Like That.” (HBO Max)
“Everyone’s in a good place to leave them so that the audience can continue their fan fiction of what they want to have happen next,” King said.
He even left the door open to anything for Carrie’s future, as King noted her conversation with Adam before the Thanksgiving festivities, in which he refused to tell her what he had planted in her renovated garden so she’d be surprised in the spring.
“That’s us saying you’ll always be surprised in life. Maybe it’s a man, maybe it’s a crocus,” King said. “But also in that scene, Carrie says, ‘Let’s go back to what the garden was, something wild. That’s more me.’ That’s for everyone who wants Carrie to always be the wild one and be the one outside the lines.”
Walking away
Reiterating his Aug. 1 announcement that “And Just Like That” would end with Season 3, King said he made the call during the writing process. He then went to Parker, who is also an executive producer on the series, and told her he had gone “as far as this can go before it becomes something else.”
Together, he said, King and Parker went to HBO Max leadership with their decision to end the series, which led to an additional two-episode order to allow for them to craft a proper conclusion. King commended the platform for valuing creative decision-making in backing their decision, despite the series still driving cultural conversation and ratings (although, HBO Max has not shared viewership data for Season 3).
“It’s an odd decision to make, but I feel like it’s the right decision for the world that we created,” King said.
Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker on the set of “And Just Like That.” (HBO Max)
The right time to share
Viewers and critics alike were thrown when the announcement dropped just two weeks before the finale airing, leading to speculation that HBO Max opted to cancel the expensive series after it had devolved from a comforting nostalgia thinkpiece machine into a divisive show hemorrhaging viewers.
But King maintains the rollout of the news was by design, meant to keep viewers engaged until the right time came to feel the show’s loss. The way he sees it, putting “final season” on the episodes from the start meant audiences would stop “worrying about” what would happen next — especially as it related to Carrie and Aidan (John Corbett), her longtime lover who returned to her life after the death of her husband Mr. Big (Chris Noth).
“One thing I wanted to do with Carrie and Aidan, that we succeeded at, was getting people involved,” King said. “They were quite anxious about it all and concerned. They were mad at Carrie and then they were happy when she let him go.”
He added that the storyline of Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) husband Harry (Evan Handler) being diagnosed with prostate cancer would have also taken a more serious meaning should fans have been aware of it being the final season — when it was meant as an exploration of the beloved characters’ relationship when sex isn’t always in the picture.
“The show has always been very alive in front of the camera. It’s been alive in the press, so I didn’t want to kill it,” he added. “Then after that beautiful episode with Duncan [Episode 10], that was a really good place to announce. Now you can feel things. You have two episodes to feel everything you want to feel.”
When asked if fans’ love-hate relationship with the show contributed to the decision to end it here, King reframed it by calling it a “love-party piñata relationship.”
“It’s just fun to hit this little pink unicorn with a stick at a party. It’s just a press piñata,” he said. “I don’t think that’s hate as much as it is chatter.”
“And Just Like That” Seasons 1-3 are now streaming on HBO Max.
