Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Before Community was even a twinkle in NBC’s eye, Sex And The City had six seasons and a movie. Then it got a second movie. Then there was talk of a third, but the creative team decided to make a revival series that we’ve all spent the last four years enduring. Given this track record, the rather abrupt nature of last night’s finale, and the current media landscape’s reticence to let any sleeping dog lie, you might reasonably expect that in another five to ten years’ time we could return to the world of Carrie Bradshaw. This will not happen, maintains showrunner Michael Patrick King.
When asked by Variety whether there is “any openness” to returning to Carrie’s story, King responded, “It is closed. Because I care so much about what we’ve done,” continuing, “And I got emotional not because of letting go of Carrie, but because of the people that care about Carrie. I just realized ‘care’ is in ‘Carrie.'” And despite fresh observations such as that, King insists that as a writer, there’s nothing left to say. “I never thought once about continuing,” King says. “Telling it like it is: It’s an instinct. Anyone else could keep going. I can’t.”
King does give a little bit more insight into the nature of the show’s cancellation in the interview, maintaining that while it was his decision to end the show and not HBO Max’s, it wasn’t a decision he arrived at until season three’s production was well under way. “The reality is, the decision was not made at the beginning of the season,” King shares. “When Susan Fales-Hill and I were writing the last episode, which is in the middle [of the season’s production], all of a sudden we came up with that moment for the end of the series and the season.” No, that moment was not the long shots of Miranda’s toilet overflowing with turds, but Carrie writing the words “The woman realized she was not alone — she was on her own.” And just like that, one of the most iconic characters of the past 30 years is laid to rest.
