The lovesick couple parted ways but kept things open in the finale of the 'Sex and the City' reboot.
Spoiler alert! If you haven't seen the season 2 finale of And Just Like That, proceed with caution.
If the season 2 finale of the Sex and the City spinoff, And Just Like That, left you scratching your head about Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Aidan Shaw's (John Corbett) romantic future, showrunner Michael Patrick King tries to clarify the writers' intentions in the show's Writers' Room Podcast.
In this week's episode, King and several other writers and producers delve into the finale, which is titled, "The Last Supper Part 2: Entrée."
In the episode, Aidan comes to Carrie's home to tell her that he plans to return to Virginia for good to be a constant for his three sons, especially his youngest Wyatt, who was recently in a serious car accident.
Aidan seems to think that he can't have Carrie in his life in visits or in any way for the next five years as Wyatt finishes out his teens. Insisting the five years will go by in a snap, Aidan leaves and Carrie ends the show with her pal, Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury), sitting on a beach in Greece ordering drinks.
In the podcast, King speaks about the decision to once again break Carrie and Aidan up, noting that it had to come from Aidan this time.
"She's not going to hurt him because she knows she can't. And we also don't want the fans to think we did that again," King explains. "So he's going to hurt her. And the only way we knew that he would ever pull away from her is if the bigger love — and every parent would assume that this is a bigger love — is the responsibility and love for your children."
King admits that Aidan declaring he can't see Carrie for five years is a "debatable point," but seems to reason that this is what Aidan believes to be the only way.
"What you all think about what happened and what you all think their individual states are, we wanted to end with that moment of believing the truth of we've made this connection and it's going to stay there," King says of the couple saying their goodbyes without any tears.
The showrunner says his plan was always to end the season with Carrie and Seema sitting on a beach together.
"I knew it was going to end before anything that Carrie and Seema would be sitting on a beach in Greece looking out at the horizon, that it would not end with Carrie and Aidan," he says. "Our only little tip to you, the audience, the people who are watching and wondering what we're thinking. There's a little, tiny thread of what we're thinking."
Flagging Carrie's line — "Well, I may get some time off for good behavior" — King adds, "You would only say that if you're already going, 'It's not gonna be five years.' She's very cute, but she does go on to say, 'There will be others.'"
King admits that he struggled to come up with the final line of the season, saying, "We try to end with these poetic lines… and when I tried to write something poetic for this, it was just too forced."
So instead, Carrie ends the season saying, "And just like that, I ordered two more cosmopolitans."
In addition to Carrie and Aidan's storyline, there was a satisfying cameo from Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) at the start of the finale episode, as well as empowering storylines for both Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis) and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon).
And Just Like That has been renewed for season 3, but with the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and Writers' Guild strikes, it's unclear when that season will begin to film.
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