The complicated feelings of grieving the potential of something great.

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And just like that… Sex and the City has finally closed out its latest delightfully divisive chapter.

The HBO Max sequel to the iconic Sex and the City, And Just Like That…, is officially ending after its third season, with showrunner Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker announcing the series will conclude with a two-part finale.

Watch the trailer for Season 3. Post continues below.

The spin-off, which premiered in December 2021, followed the lives of Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda (portrayed by Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon) and aired over two decades after the original show ended — and notably without Kim Cattrall returning as Samantha.

Despite the latest season's savage reviews, fans were still stunned that the show would be coming to an end after just three seasons.

For what it's worth, it didn't sound like And Just Like That star and executive producer, Kristin Davis, was prepared to say goodbye to the spin-off. "I am profoundly sad," she penned on Instagram. "To our fans, we love you forever and ever."

Of course, this isn't the first time we've said goodbye to these women. We did it when the original series ended in 2004. We did it after the first movie. And again after the second. And just like that… here we are doing it one more time.

Image: HBO.

Like Davis, I'm also sad about the show officially being laid to bed. At the same time, I'm a little happy that fans can finally say goodbye and (for lack of a better term) be put out of our misery.

The news for Sex and the City superfans is equal parts sad and satisfying. It's been a complicated time to remain a fan in the years that And Just Like That… has aired.

For some of us, we're just happy to hang out with our parasocial besties for 40 minutes every week. On the latest Mamamia Out Loud, Holly Wainwright spoke about that feeling.

"I was very upset about this," Holly said about hearing the show would not return.

"I'm not going to argue that it is brilliant prestige TV. It isn't, but… I love being with these women," she continued.

Listen: Holly, Jessie and Amelia share their complicated feelings about the news on Mamamia Out Loud. Post continues below.

But other SATC fans have found the series to be downright painful to watch.

The new show looks like SATC, it features the same people and fashion as SATC, but there's something missing — and that something is the lacklustre script and storylines that don't feel reflective of the characters we rooted for across six groundbreaking seasons of phenomenal TV.

At its core, the original series was about sex, love and, above all, the friendship between four mid-thirties women. But in the spin-off, as the women have aged, the show has undoubtedly lost its way.

Look no further than the character of Miranda: the ambitious, outspoken and witty lawyer, who provided comic relief and helped ground Carrie when she was losing her grip on reality (which, admittedly, happened a lot).

But in the show's latest iteration? This woman does not exist. In her place? A confused, timid and humourless middle-aged woman who just seems like… well, bad vibes most of the time.

Image: HBO Max.

Overall, all the characters feel like shadows of their former selves: Carrie is recycling failed relationships as if Big never existed and Charlotte is, umm… really not doing a whole lot at all.

All these factors combined mean that the show's end feels especially complicated, raising questions around whether And Just Like That… may have even dented the original show's legacy.

Fans couldn't help but hope that the show would, one day, find its footing again — but based on Season 3, the weakest season so far, this idea was as fantastical as Carrie's pivot to historical fiction.

Sex and the City turned TV on its head when it premiered in 1998: it was daring, groundbreaking TV and it changed how TV approached female friendships, influencing TV shows like Girls, Insecure, Broad City, The Bold Type and Younger.

The four women at the centre of the series felt like intimate friends. Their characters were complicated, flawed, fearless — and viewers were deeply invested in their happiness.

Image: HBO.

And oh lord, it was so damn funny, emotional and genre-defining, plugging into the dating zeitgeist like no other show has managed to do since.

This means that And Just Like That… had very large stilettos to fill, and sadly, it failed in almost every way, creating an unfunny, derivative, shallow and just cringe-worthy spin-off season.

It's unclear exactly what caused the cancellation, but some have speculated that negative reviews and dwindling viewership are to blame — the show debuted to 1.1 million viewers in Season 1 but experienced a steep decline in Season 3, with the highest viewership only reaching 437,000 people (via Samba TV).

Despite all this, did I still enjoy some parts of And Just Like That…? Absolutely. In particular, Season 1 had some strong moments with Carrie moving through the grief of losing Big, Miranda exploring her sexuality and Charlotte's power friendship with Lisa Todd Wexley.

These all felt like authentic inclusions in the SATC lore.

These glimmers of greatness suggest that the series had the potential to be something special, which makes its bizarre script, faux-woke sentiments and carousel of tokenistic additional characters even harder to stomach.

And no amount of new characters (Seema was quite fun, I'll admit!) can make up for the fact that, in many fans' minds, the show should never have returned without the incomparable Kim Cattrall returning as Samantha.

Curiously, after the news that And Just Like That… would be ending after three seasons, Cattrall posted a cryptic message on Instagram alongside a photo of a sunset.

"It's the end of a very long week," she wrote.

And like a long week, many fans hoped that better days for this show were still coming around the corner — and whether you loved, hated or hate-watched the spin-off, that dream is over (at least for now).

Feature image: HBO Max.