Sex and the City finale reviewed

A critical look at how the revival handles aging characters and whether it honors the franchise.

Sex and the City's aging legacy fades in And Just Like That finale

And Just Like That arrived with high hopes to update Sex and the City's world for characters now in their 50s. The season leaned on new faces while keeping the original trio at a distance, and it sidestepped Samantha's return—a gap fans felt deeply. The show also revived Mr Big's death as a shock, a decision that set a brittle tone for the revival's ambitions.

In the finale, Carrie wanders through couture with little direction, and the closing beats feel more like an indulgent shrug than a decisive send-off. Kim Cattrall's brief cameo could not heal the absence of the old dynamic, and the overall sense was that the series had lost its way rather than its nerve. The phrase hate-watching attached itself to the show, a meta label that reflected how audiences followed the missteps. Michael Patrick King's farewell note that this might be a wonderful place to stop underlined the sense that the show had nowhere fresh to go. "Shit happens" became a muted punchline that annotated the season's tonal misfires.

The revival forgot that aging can be rich material, not a risk. It treated the characters as fashion icons who wander, rather than people with histories that demand new chapters. The result is a show that confuses nostalgia with depth and uses couture as a substitute for character truth.

In a streaming era that prizes revivals, a thoughtful approach to aging could rebuild trust with fans. The path forward would require honest writing about friendship, ambition, and the realities of growing older, not just glossy interiors and cameos. A healthier model would treat legacy as unfinished business rather than a museum piece and offer a clear, courageous narrative about life after big moments.

Highlights

The door may close on the show, but the question of how to honor a beloved legacy stays open.