If you’re not including And Just Like That… season 3 in your best HBO Max shows of 2025 list, I can hardly blame you. Since its debut in 2021, the Sex and the City (SATC) sequel has had a rocky ride on screen, frequently being lambasted on social media for how it’s changed the core personalities of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristen Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). While Miranda left Steve (David Eigenberg) in the dust and transformed into a legal intern lesbian, Charlotte felt out of touch with her helicopter parenting of kids Rock (Alexa Swinton) and Lily (Cathy Ang).
I couldn’t even tell you who any of the middling replacements for Samantha (Kim Cattrall) are, with Cattrall herself making the career move of a lifetime by staying well away from this absolutely underwhelming car crash (well, all except for that excruciating season 2 finale cameo). The point is, none of our other stars come anywhere near her, but as much as we might want Samantha’s miraculous return in the season 3 finale to scold everyone for making such terrible television, it’s not going to happen.
So, what will happen, or perhaps the more important question is: what needs to happen? If you’ve been managing to stay awake while watching the HBO Max show, you’ll have noticed Carrie is slowly edging closer to the version of herself she used to be in Sex and the City. She’s easily the biggest stumbling block in And Just Like That… (ATLJ), and if we have to watch two more episodes until it’s over, she better have the best damn fictional U-turn TV has ever seen.
And Just Like That has been rough on everyone, but Carrie Bradshaw needs to come full circle
Spoilers for And Just Like That… season 3 episodes 9 and 10 ahead.
If you’re a seasoned SATC watcher like me, you’ll have probably thought Carrie was the worst of the quartet in the 90s too… and you’d be right. Never taking responsibility for her own actions and feelings, and instead placing the blame anywhere else, she was too frustrating to consistently warm to (even if she was dressed immaculately). Watching her make the same mistakes over again was relatable and somewhat charming for the first few seasons, but after six seasons, two standalone movies and now three seasons of a sequel series, it all wears awfully thin.
That doesn’t mean Carrie hasn’t been through it in AJLT: she’s been through the fictional death of husband Big (Ron Galotti), the real-life death of Willie Garson, who played BFF Stanford, and she’s picked back up a tired-out situationship with Aidan (John Corbett). We’ve got to have some kind of sympathy for her, right? Wrong! For the bulk of ATLJ, Carrie’s been a burden on her friends, an even bigger burden on us, and the biggest burden of all to herself. All those years of living life in the city on screen, and she doesn’t seem to have learned a single lesson from them.
However, that’s slowly started to change. Just before breaking up with Aidan (finally) and striking up a sexy new attraction to Duncan (Jonathan Clarke), we see Miranda confront Carrie about her evasive defences after Charlotte’s house party in season 3 episode 9. Miranda points out the amount of continued distrust between Carrie and Aidan, and for a split second, AJLT becomes the closest thing we’ve ever seen to a true SATC revival. Finally cutting ties with what isn’t serving her is the healthiest move Carrie has made in years, but can she sustain it?
Here’s my pitch for the AJLT season 3 ending. Miranda stays with Joy (Dolly Wells) and continues to build a healthy relationship (nothing wrong with these two, so live and let live). Harry’s (Evan Handler) prostate cancer is cleared, leaving Charlotte space to thrive as the good friend and mother we know her to be, and the others… well, they can do whatever they like as we won’t be paying attention.
But Carrie needs to dump any and all men, work on herself in the therapeutic ways she’d always dismissed in SATC, and actually start to be a good person. We can’t bow out in good conscience if she still remains a threat to New York City’s female friendships, and there will truly be no evolution in her character if she leaves in an even worse state than when she started. In the most dramatic case, the best thing for Carrie would be to get out of New York completely, which could mean moving back to England with Duncan. Frankly, I don’t care where in the world she ends up, both Carrie and AJLT need to not be insufferable the first time ever in its final moments. I know it’s hard, but pretty please?
