Goodbye to All of (And Just Like) That

“Who am I alone?” Carrie wonders. “Who are we without Carrie?” I wonder.

By Kady Ruth Ashcraft | August 14, 2025 | 9:45pm

Photo: HBO Max Entertainment TV

Warning: spoilers for season 3, episode 12 of And Just Like That…

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” wrote Joan Didion in 1967, New York City’s second most famous literary savant. The first, of course, is Carrie Bradshaw, the prudish, preeminent sex and relationships columnist turned historical fiction author, whose work a single person has yet to find a flaw with. In the series finale of And Just Like That…, which is presumably also the finale of the extended Sex and the City universe—a universe we’ve enjoyed clomping around in since 1998—Ms. Bradshaw finds herself squinting towards a possibly lonesome ending. Big is dead; Aidan ran home to Virginia; and if there was any potential for something with Duncan, it fizzled when he skipped back across the pond.

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But there is a lot to be thankful for in “Party of One,” which was centered around the lead-up to Miranda’s Thanksgiving dinner party. I don’t know what three-season-long fog lifted from the writers’ brains, but the episode knocked it out of the park. It was funny, sentimental, charmingly paced, and the characters we’ve come to love were recognizably themselves—something not to take for granted in this series.

In our final beginning, Carrie wanders into a Korean BBQ restaurant on her own and—to assuage the presumed horrors of solo dining—the hostess brings her a large plushy creature to sit across from. Robot waiters zip past as Carrie sits stunned in the booth. “So apparently, not only is it tragic for women to be alone in the past, it’s also an issue in the future,” she quips to her friends as they enter a bridal fashion show at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden later that week. It’s the perfect backdrop for the women to appraise the current value of marriage—both theirs and the concept of the union at large.

Lisa Todd Wexley, who finally addressed the tension on the cutting room floor between her and Hot Editor Marion, is struggling with Herbert’s post-election depression—so she’s decidedly not at the most fun moment in her marriage. Neither is Charlotte, whose husband made it through cancer treatment but is now preoccupied with the hard (pun intended) long-term effects on their intimate life. But both agree that given the chance to do it again, knowing what they know now about the realities of marriage, they’d still say I Do.

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Seema and Carrie’s conversation is a little more existential. Seema, having recently learned that Hot Gardener Adam doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage, meditates on her own attachment to the tradition. Is she just holding onto a fantasy she conjured up as a young girl? Why did Carrie want to get married, she asks. “It meant I was chosen,” she responds.

Miranda, who was also once “chosen” until she discovered she wanted to be chosen by a different gender, had dinner with Steve to discuss the big, intimidating role they were about to take on: grandparents. “There’s no way our grandkid is not gonna know us,” he sweetly reassures her. Steve’s a good guy! We also get to hear him say the word “enchilada,” which is perhaps the best parting gift his character could have given us.

But Seema’s question lingers with Carrie, piling on top of the lingering poignancy of her solo dining adventure. Are her partnered days behind her? She later wonders aloud to Charlotte, “Who am I alone?” This is after Charlotte says my favorite line of the episode: “I’m so excited to show you my new hallway.” I bet you are, Charlotte…

Between Big, Aidan, Berger, Aleksandr Petrovsky, Bill Kelley, and at least a dozen flings, we’ve seen Carrie alone many times. Carrie knows this, too. But as she clarifies, she never thought she’d be alone for too long. And even though the enduring charm of this show can be summed up by something Charlotte said in the Season 4 premiere of SATC— “maybe we could be each other’s soulmates and then we could let men be these great, nice guys to have fun with”—the promise of there being another guy to have fun with is dwindling, or at least becoming less appealing. And that’s rightfully difficult for Carrie to stomach.

Though the fear of permanent singledom looms in her mind, Carrie lets the joy of preparing for Thanksgiving distract her. She zips around town, delivering her friends pies in the most charming manner, like a baked goods Santa Claus in high couture. She might not have a bedfellow, but there’s no doubt she’s still a woman about town. Dressed in a deep pink tulle skirt—certainly a nod to her iconic ballerina-inspired outfit from the SATC opening credits—she arrives at Miranda’s house only to find the guest list has dwindled. We knew Seema would be spending the holiday with Adam’s family; Charlotte and Harry opted for a more low-key Thanksgiving (which turns out to be the perfect setting for Harry to finally get hard. Mazel!); and Steve has bowed out so as not to cause more drama with Brady. But now Joy’s dog Sappho has swallowed a Lego, and she has to rush her to the vet. (This was a missed opportunity for it to be the vet Che Diaz works at, but alas…) Who shows up? Brady’s baby mama, Mia, her two friends Sergio and Epcot (“my parents were Disney freaks”), and Charlotte’s yawn of a work friend, Mark Kasabian.

We don’t see what I’m presuming was a chaotically awkward meal (the turkey’s undercooked, thanks to Carrie, so Brady assembles them seaweed and cucumber dishes, while Epcot’s soft cheese intolerance keeps them bound to the bathroom). But we see the aftermath: Carrie bemoans Charlotte’s attempt to set her up with Mark and Miranda cleans up a graphic toilet backup before Joy finally shows up in time for pie.

Carrie slips out to let the two lovebirds enjoy their dessert and heads back to her giant home, where she disables her home alarm system and stares down Chekov’s karaoke machine that Miranda so graciously gifted her. And finally, FINALLY, Carrie puts on a song that cues up a well-earned, series-end montage. As Barry White sings “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything,” we drop in on our beloved cast of insane people one last time—Anthony and Giuseppe playfully fighting after a failed breakup on Anthony’s part; the Goldblatts looking over photos of Rock’s performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie; Seema and her loving beau who doesn’t want to get married laughing with his family; Herbert shaking off his funk and offering to do the dishes for Lisa; Miranda and Joy sharing dessert; and Carrie digging into an uncut pumpkin pie with a spoon before heading to her laptop to rewrite the epilogue to her novel— the one her editor request be a bit more hopeful than just the woman ending up alone. “The woman realized she was not alone,” Carrie types. “She was on her own.” A perfect edit.

Unless Carrie drops dead on a Peloton tomorrow, this obviously isn’t her end. But it’s her end with us. And for all the flaws this show held (let’s never forget Lisa’s father died in season 1 and 2), it was also incredibly fun to drop in with our, again, most insane friends to see what sort of impractical hat they’d be wearing, what relationship they’d be driving off a cliff, and occasionally, when we were lucky, how they were navigating issues women of a certain age are certain to face. And while Joan Didion was correct, endings can be harder to see, this final episode of And Just Like That… ended with something very fun and very easy to hear: the final credits set to the original Sex and the City theme song.

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