Charlotte and Miranda Deserved More From ‘And Just Like That’

(L-R): Kristin Davis as Charlotte and Cynthia Nixon as Miranda in Season 3 of And Just Like That. Credit – Craig Blankenhorn—HBO Max

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of And Just Like That.

And Just Like That put loyal Sex and the City fans through a lot. There was Big’s death by Peloton in the very first episode, the diabolical caricature of a non-binary person that was podcaster/comedian Che Diaz, and a slew of both plot continuity errors and tonal inconsistencies. Not to mention the larger-than-life absence of one Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall).

But, now that the Sex and the City spinoff has officially come to an end, we can definitively say that one of the show’s worst offenses was the ways in which it failed two of its predecessor’s most important and beloved central characters: Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). While Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) received main-character treatment and sufficient closure in the two-part Season 3 finale—which was announced as the overall series’ finale just a few weeks before it aired—Charlotte and Miranda capped off a season of lukewarm storylines with a figurative whimper.

Considering how creator Michael Patrick King broke the news of the decision to end the show, it seems possible the Season 3 finale was not initially intended to be And Just Like That‘s final installment. Were that ever confirmed to be the case, we’d be slightly more willing to forgive the episode’s missteps. However, if we are to believe King’s claims that it became clear to him all the way back when he was writing the finale that it “might be a wonderful place to stop,” and that he and Parker held off on announcing the news simply because they “didn’t want the word ‘final’ to overshadow the fun of watching the season,” the show’s late-stage offenses becomes far less excusable.

Let’s start with Miranda.

While Season 3 did finally give And Just Like That-era Miranda an age-appropriate and intellectually compatible romantic partner in the form of Joy (Dolly Wells), it wasn’t enough to make up for the weekly humiliation rituals to which she was subjected—from being turned into a viral news blooper meme to proving herself an inexplicably terrible houseguest. Even with mere minutes to go in the series finale, we were forced to watch as Miranda spent Thanksgiving evening scrubbing the bathroom floor clean following a disastrous toilet overflow caused by Epcot (Spike Einbinder), the Disney park name-bearing and lactose intolerant friend of Mia (Ellie Stiller), the soon-to-be baby mama of a still freshly adult Brady (Niall Cunningham). If you’re not sure what to make of the sentence you just read, we don’t blame you. But, case in point.

While Miranda was involved in embarrassing hijinks in Sex and the City, she was never the butt of the joke. And where her storyline in Sex and the City culminated in a historically cynical Miranda finding happiness in the life she was building with Steve (David Eigenberg) and baby Brady in Brooklyn, this time around, Miranda couldn’t even be bothered to try to mend the rift that had opened between her and Brady over her meddling in his relationships before the credits rolled.

As for Charlotte, well, she barely got any storyline at all. After a season of suffering from vertigo and doing her best to navigate the prostate cancer diagnosis of her beloved husband Harry (Evan Handler), Charlotte was all but sidelined in And Just Like That‘s finale. We saw her help Harry finally get his mojo back and continue to come to terms with the non-binary identity of their child Rock (Alexa Swinton), but for Charlotte personally, there was a glaring lack of substance.

The show almost seemed to acknowledge this in a conversation between Charlotte and LTW (Nicole Ari Parker) in which Lisa lamented that marriage seems to always be about their husbands’ feelings and disappointments rather than their own, and asked Charlotte whether she would still get married knowing what she knows now about “the way it really is.” Charlotte’s response? “Oh, absolutely.”

This squares with what we know about Charlotte’s deep and abiding love for her family. But while Charlotte was always a traditionalist, in Sex and the City, she contained multitudes. The Charlotte that And Just Like That left us with felt, sadly and utterly disappointingly, far more one-dimensional.

Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected].