Warning: This article contains major spoilers for And Just Like That episode 4.
2021's long-awaited Sex & The City revival And Just Like That... has just revealed the fate of beloved original series character Stanford Blatch, after actor Willie Garson sadly died back in September. The reboot, which sees Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Preston (formerly Bradshaw) dealing with the grief of losing her husband and the long-term fallout of her friendship with Kim Cattrall's Samantha falling apart, was forced to write Stanford out.
Willie Garson appeared in the first three episodes of And Just Like That... including at Big's funeral, but died in late September of pancreatic cancer after expressing her desire to fill the entire season. That led to a change in the show's trajectory as Carrie discovered a note from Stanford in her apartment just after she's brought Big's ashes home. The note reveals Stanford's fate, confirming that the Sex & The City fan-favorite left suddenly for Tokyo on business and chose to communicate his departure through the letter rather than facing Carrie directly: “Dearest Carrie, By the time you read this I will be in Tokyo. I couldn’t call you—not without crying... And you have had enough crying.”
While the sentiment is touching to a degree - and Stanford's husband Anthony clarifies that the TikTok star he was managing asked him to go on tour and he couldn't face letting Carrie down to her face. Naturally upset, Carrie, rightly, expressed her hurt at the dramatic method of communication and the assumption that she would not have wanted to know Stanny's good news. The Sex & The City reboot presented it as typical Stanford behavior - and Anthony got his own letter demanding a divorce - but it was a somewhat cruel way to sign Stanford off, given the affection the character is held in and also Carrie's own past. Because her being given catastrophic, potentially relationship-changing news mirrors when Jack Berger (Ron Livingston) breaks up with her via post-it note, in one of the most notorious Sex & The City moments of all time.
In one moment, Livingston's Berger became the most hated character in the history of Sex & The City's cast, regularly inspiring takedown pieces and generally being considered somewhere dramatically below contempt. His behavior with Carrie was scrutinized and it seemed he was never a good person, projecting his own securities onto her and generally being a bad fit for her before having the audacity to dump her with a simple 7-word exit, immortalized in yellow: "I'm sorry, I can't. Don't hate me-". Most outrageously, Berger didn't even give Carrie the chance to hate him, even as he insisted she shouldn't, and Sex & The City devilishly found the humor in that emotional trauma with perfection. There were laughs in that heartbreak, but with Stanford's echo of Berger's behavior, there is less potential for that humor.
In both cases, the notes were left to avoid confrontation and actual feelings, but Berger's post-it fit his character and Stanford's feels like a betrayal. Even at his most caustic, Stanford was not selfish to the cost of Carrie, and mirroring a notorious low-point for Parker's character feels like a bit of a gut punch. Perhaps the intent was to leave a mark and to honor the fact that Stanford would never leave without fireworks, but surely he could have been quietly retired with the same business trip in the same way And Just Like That... is carefully crafting a post-Sex & The City narrative without Samantha. After all, Carrie now has more trauma that she's just not able to directly process, even with Anthony there as a surrogate, and Stanford's parting shot feels not like a celebration but like an insult.
And Just Like That... airs new episodes every Thursday.