And Just Like That’s shocking twist betrayed everything Sex and the City was about

*SPOILERS!* As the highly anticipated reboot finally drops, Olivia Petter explains why its heartbreaking beginning is so devastating for fans

Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Noth in ‘And Just Like That...' (HBO Max)

“Nobody’s dead. Nobody.” Those are the words of Michael Patrick King, And Just Like That’s executive producer, when he was pressed a couple weeks ago on whether the Sex and the City reboot had killed anyone off. Well, that aged brilliantly.

As many of us now know, 37 minutes into the first episode, Big has a sudden heart attack. The mercurial love of Carrie Bradshaw’s life, having just finished a class on his Peloton, heads to the shower, before collapsing and clutching his chest. “And just like that,” intones Carrie, rather glibly, in a signature voiceover, “Big died.”

It’s ruthless, distressing and, yes, I can understand why they did it. In its heyday, SATC was a groundbreaking show. Here was a group of thirty-something women (Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie, Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, Kristin Davis’s Charlotte and Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda) navigating friendship, careers and love with honesty and autonomy. It was cool. It was subversive. It was 23 years ago.

For the reboot to be more than just an exercise in nostalgia, heaving with self-congratulatory in-jokes and open-goal observations about these (now) middle-aged women trying to remain tapped into the zeitgeist, the writers needed to do something drastic. They needed something, erm, Big.

By killing off one of the show’s core characters, this reboot becomes something more than anyone expected: a meditation on grief and aging. The emotional stakes are higher, the pain more visceral. Timely, too. As the pandemic rages on into its third year, loss is something to which many of us can relate. And so, in some ways, it makes perfect sense. Critics have praised the show’s return, with The Independent’s Adam White calling the new episodes “brave”, “bold” and “unexpected”. And yet, here I am, furious, feeling like the show has betrayed everything it stood for.

Of all the deaths fans might have expected, this wasn’t it. Ever since it was announced that the reboot would go ahead without Kim Cattrall (who didn’t want to take part), fans have been wondering how her character, Samantha Jones, would be written out of the show. In the end, instead of being killed off, the PR juggernaut has simply moved to London “for work”.

There’s more to it, of course: namely, the art-mirroring-life storyline that Samantha and Carrie fell out over their professional relationship (Carrie ditched Samantha as her publicist). Reports of Cattrall and Parker’s own strained relationship have circulated for years, but things came to a head in 2018 when, after Parker offered condolences on the death of Cattrall’s brother, the actor shot back in an Instagram post: “I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time @sarahjessicaparker. Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now.”

Knowing this, fans didn’t exactly expect Cattrall to take part in the reboot. We would have probably even accepted Samantha’s death as a result of her absence. After all, that would have been the only reasonable explanation for the demise of our beloved quartet. Their fierce, and supposedly unbreakable, bond was the heart of the original series and the two films that followed. Regardless of what was happening off-screen, the friendship between Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda overcame all hurdles. These women saw each other through everything and put each other above all else, including romantic partners. Female friendship hadn’t been celebrated like that on screen before. I’m not convinced it has been since.

That the writers would even consider forging ahead with a reboot without Cattrall, then, was already hard to swallow. But bumping off Big in such circumstances? It’s unforgivable. These women have gone through a lot together – divorce, infidelity, cancer – but losing a partner so suddenly is surely the most devastating. And so I have a hard time believing that any argument would have prevented Samantha from hopping on the next plane from London to be by Carrie’s side the second she heard the news. But remember, Cattrall isn’t in the show. So what does Samantha do? Pick up the phone? Write a heartfelt text? Or an email? No. She sends flowers – and then continues to ignore Carrie’s texts. Because apparently she just ghosts them all now.

The flowers are meant to be a nice gesture, of course, and Carrie seems to appreciate it. But for us, it’s a heartbreaking moment, one that sends a brutal message about friendship: the rift Samantha and Carrie had was beyond repair, even in the face of tragedy. This undermines their entire friendship. In fact, it undermines the entire SATC franchise.

Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Sarah Jessica Parker in the original ‘Sex and the City’ (Getty Images)

It’s not clear whether the writers had planned to kill Big off before or after they knew Cattrall wouldn’t be taking part. Either way, this storyline is a gross misstep that goes against everything I and many others adored about SATC. It simply doesn’t make sense. Nor does it sit right that the writers seem to have chosen a lucrative opportunity over the fans that helped make their show a success in the first place. Haven’t we been let down enough? I know I’m not the only one still reeling from the disastrous – and deeply offensive – farrago that was Sex and the City 2.

The bleak reality, of course, is that reboots like this are bound to bring in the big bucks. And so the show must – and will – go on. With eight episodes, I suspect And Just Like That will zero in on Carrie’s grieving process, something that has the potential for compelling, and emotionally rich, television. But without Samantha, the series will only serve to remind us that friendship, as Carrie says, is not forever. It’s only for six seasons, and two average-to-poor films.