And Just Like That… provided a new and refreshing take on the Sex and the City characters that supplied them each with an ending better than either of the movies. The original series never left off with any sense of finality and the movies repeated that same feeling of needing to know more, but with a whole season to build toward its ending, And Just Like That… concluded with about as much closure as fans can get from a TV show.
By continuing on into a second season, the series threatens that feeling of finality. Many viewers are sure to be thrilled that there will be an And Just Like That… Season 2, but the franchise may have been better off ending at Season 1. It may also further exacerbate some of the flaws that fans complained about in the first season.
Sex and the City began a story that focused on a core group of characters whose lives audiences became supremely invested in. The quartet of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha (who didn’t appear in the revival) were middle-aged women struggling to find love and purpose in New York City during a time when their friendships were invaluable and their lives took them in strikingly distinct directions. By the conclusion of the series, it seemed that each woman found the love of their life — but for a series that was originally bold in its realistic and often ugly look at relationships, that never quite felt right.
The movies proved how complicated a “happily ever after” could be without ever quite providing a fitting end of their own. Both films dealt with the ongoing complications of romantic partnership and the difficulties in finding happiness amidst the broader complications of life, yet in sorting through all those complications there was never really a solution or a defined message. When And Just Like That… promised to spend a whole season progressing the lives of the quartet, it provided the perfect opportunity to give each character’s story the space and attention it deserved. With some bumps along the way, it managed to do that splendidly.
Carrie came to terms with her grief over Big’s death while rediscovering her own independence and chance of happiness. Charlotte faced the ever-evolving troubles of parenthood as her children became teenagers with new and unique problems of their own. Miranda discovered a whole new direction for her life that broke out of the mundane routine she felt stifled her for so long. Their endings were not definitive by any means, and a new season will have no problem continuing those stories, but an open ending was always what was going to work best for Sex and the City because that captured the realism of life.
And reality is important here. The core of the series was always about the contrast between what we imagine to be perfect for us and what truly is, while calling into question if “perfect” is something that ever even really exists. Whether it was Carrie self-sabotaging even in the most ideal of circumstances or Charlotte finding out her Prince Charming was not an affluent socialite but a down-to-earth divorce lawyer, riding off into the sunset was never going to be the right ending for the characters. Instead, the And Just Like That… Season 1 finale provided a message that was far more appropriate: that life goes on, keeps changing, and the best we can do is learn to change with it.
A second season jeopardizes that while providing new opportunities for the mistakes of the first season to get even worse. Many fans balked at the new direction of Miranda’s life as she discarded her relationship with Steve, proved increasingly erratic, and often seemed too self-centered to show genuine concern for her friends. Those qualities could speak to the changes she was undergoing in her new phase of life, and her final conversation with Carrie proved that she was still committed to the friendship she valued so much throughout the series. But such mistakes are only likely to get worse in a second season that would not provide as fitting of an ending to the franchise as the first. It would’ve been best to let the series rest where it was, because fans should be wary of a continuation.
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