Die-hard fans of HBO’s Sex and the City (1998-2004) have so far been blessed with two seasons of the HBO Max revival series And Just Like That…, which ‘refollows’ the lives of author Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and friends Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis) as they navigate the complexities of modern, middle-aged life in New York City.

While the first season of AJLT debuted to fierce criticism in 2021, for not recapturing the sparkly levity of the original, the second series has received due credit for bringing its audience to what Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson calls ‘a place of acceptance’ of the new show. Simply put, AJLT is not SATC—the women are older and the world around them is more complicated. Romantic ideals are the stuff of the past, with the new series reflecting the sober realities of divorce and death, 17 years after those would-be fairytale endings.

The shocking death of Carrie’s main love interest and later husband, John James Preston—known as the iconic ‘Mr Big’ (played by since-disgraced actor Chris Noth)—is the pilot event that sets the mellower tone of AJLT. Watching Carrie grieve ‘the one’ challenges fans to embrace a less naive, more mature version of their shero—no easy feat for a viewership desperate for light, escapist entertainment in the harsh 2020s.

In the course of Season 2, Carrie’s character emerges as a stronger, more subdued version of herself, and Episode 6—‘Bomb Cyclone’, written by Michael Patrick King and Rachel Palmer—showcases this evolution. Having published her latest book about Big’s death and her life in the wake of it, Carrie is invited to present at WidowCon, a conference for bereaved women—an ironic laugh-fest at which she feels out of step.

Yet while her jokes bomb, her reading from her book—as only SJP can do it—strikes a poignant tone in portraying Carrie’s growth through grief:

I thought that over time my grief would shrink, that it wouldn’t fill every inch of me like it had for so long. My sadness never shrank but I grew, and grew until I was so large, the grief just felt smaller.

And then I realised it was time. You don't move on because you're ready to. You move on because you’ve outgrown who you used to be.

The lines are moving in their suggestion that a nurtured self can dwarf pain, and they serve as a compelling meta-moment for the figure of Carrie Bradshaw—an older woman in a new chapter, her old character and its newer version in one.