After nine seasons of television, two movies and a few dozen suitors, Carrie Bradshaw’s story is done. For now, anyway.
The latter disclaimer is necessary for several reasons, including it’s 2025 and we’ve learned that gone is far from goodbye in television. The other is with such strong, visceral reactions to the series finale – which will be detailed shortly – there’s sure to a shared sense of denial among loyal viewers, who are sure to have thoughts like, “Is this really it?” “It can’t really be it.” And “If this is really it…someone call the pear-shaped diamond with a gold band. We owe it an apology because it is far from the ugliest image we’ve ever seen on this show.”
A collective breath. Let’s rewind: The series finale took place on Thanksgiving and ended with everyone having a little something to be thankful for.
Miranda gave thanks for rubber gloves and her kind girlfriend being unfazed by poop-covered bathroom floors – though, her Hedley & Bennett apron deserved better. Charlotte and Harry gave thanks for prostate cancer surgery recovery. Seema gave thanks for the advancements made in gluten free baked goods, showing a strong willingness to adjust her expectations for pies and relationships in equal measure. Lisa gave thanks for her marriage, gorgeous as her editor was. And Anthony gave thanks for hot younger men, as usual.
As for Carrie, it’s unclear. The finale ended with her not living in a shoe, but in her giant house in Gramercy. Solo. Or, as she put it in the epilogue of her novel about a woman puzzlingly only referred to as “the woman,” she “realized she was not alone – she was on her own.”
Which would be fine, had earlier in the episode Carrie not confided in Charlotte that she needed to learn how to be ok in single life.
“Even when Big died, after the shock and the total devastation, in the back of my mind, I thought, ‘Aidan, maybe Aidan,'” she says, adding “I have to quit thinking ‘maybe a man’ and start accepting ‘maybe just me.’ And it’s not a tragedy, it’s a fact. And I just have to start accepting it, full stop.”
Is accepting the same as choosing? Not exactly. Still, creator Michael Patrick King saw the ending as empowering and something of a full circle moment.
“Many, many years later, having gone through deaths, heartbreaks, new romances, (she’s) saying, ‘I’m grown-up enough to face this, because I’ve created a life that’s so magnificent for myself,'” he told Variety. “She’s on her own. And that sentence is for everyone who has someone, and for everyone who doesn’t have someone, and — I’m going to get emotional — it’s, primarily…. Wow. I’ve never said this. It’s mostly for someone who feels bad because they don’t have someone.”
Admirable? Sure. But for Carrie? Other’s don’t seem to think so.
“It’s a sweet sentiment of self-love, but one that feels too tacked on and hastily written to pack an emotional wallop,” wrote one critic on USA Today. “And after nearly 30 years of knowing and loving Carrie, she deserved far better than this treacly Hallmark sendoff.”
For Time, critic Judy Berman delivered an even more biting analysis.
“It took three decades, nine seasons’ worth of two different series, and a pair of excruciating movies for Carrie to so much as approach the place where Samantha started,” she wrote, referencing the character played by Kim Cattrall.
For whatever that finale was, King seems intent that he’s done with the series but seemingly doesn’t rule out another.
“Look, I have definitely closed the book, and whether there’s another book remains to be seen,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “You’re never, ever not… I’m always surprised. When we closed ‘Sex and the City,’ we closed it. And just like that, we’re back!”
King emphasized in several interviews that the classiest thing to do is leave a party while it’s still happening, which is how he sees the end of “And Just Like That,” given it’s exiting amid noted sustained interest.
But what if the party is for you? It feels unfortunate that “And Just Like That” seems to have headed for the exit before the toasts.
