And just like that, Carrie Bradshaw is rekindling her old romance with Aidan Shaw — again — after their Sex and the City 2 kiss.
John Corbett’s Sex and the City character finally made his debut appearance on And Just Like That during the Thursday, July 27, episode, wasting no time in asking Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie out for dinner — on Valentine’s Day.
Despite initial miscommunication over the restaurant address, Aidan and Carrie ended up reconnecting by the tail end of Thursday’s episode. After their sweet dinner date, Aidan accepts Carrie’s offer for a nightcap at her West Village apartment.
“When you said come back to your place, I thought you had a different place,” he says in the scene, standing on the stoop of her iconic New York City brownstone. “At the restaurant, I thought, ‘How great. This feels really great.’ We’re back where we started. But this is where we ended with that f—king wall I couldn’t break through and those floors — remember the floors I redid? It’s all bad. It’s all in there.”
Carrie — who dated Aidan on and off starting in season 3 of the original series before cheating on Aidan with Chris Noth’s Mr. Big and calling off their engagement — quickly pointed out that it’s not exactly the same as what it once was.
“It’s the same place, but we’re not in the same place. And really it doesn’t even look the same. I hung wallpaper and I’ve repainted,” Carrie muses. “And it wasn’t all bad, Aidan, was it?”
Carrie sold the Upper East Side penthouse that she shared with late husband Big at the end of And Just Like That season 1 following his death in the Max pilot. As Carrie had not previously let go of her classic downtown apartment, she subsequently decided to move in full-time when the sale was complete. While Carrie reinvented her beloved space, Aidan wasn’t sure it was enough to cover up all their relationship baggage.
“I’m listening [to what you’re saying], I just can’t do it. No matter how much I want to, I can’t go in there again with all that. I’m never going in there again,” Aidan — who is a divorced father of three in And Just Like That — explains.
Carrie ultimately understood where Aidan was coming from, noting that “time doesn’t heal everything” despite her hopes otherwise. Aidan — who was visiting NYC from his home base in Arizona — then proclaimed it was time to leave.
“F—k it, this is New York. They have hotels, right?” he adds, turning back around to face Carrie before they shared a passionate kiss.
“And just like that, Aidan and I were back on the same page,” Parker’s Carrie concluded via voiceover before the episode cut to black.
The end of Thursday’s episode seemingly indicated that Aidan would be sticking around in the Big Apple longer, which showrunner Michael Patrick King previously hinted at last month.
“I didn’t bring Aidan back to fail,” King, 68, quipped to The New York Times in June, seemingly teasing that the onscreen couple could be endgame when the season wraps.
New episodes of And Just Like That season 2 drop Thursdays on Max.
