(WARNING: INCREDIBLY MAJOR AND JUST LIKE THAT… EPISODE 1 SPOILERS AHEAD!!!) If you’ve just found out about the big (ahem) bombshell—and you still don’t know how to feel about it—then we’re here to help. Keep reading to find out what happens to Big in And Just Like That…, why the show went in that direction and what Big actor Chris Noth has said about the shocking moment!
What happens to Big in And Just Like That…?
(AGAIN, WE’RE WARNING YOU: HUGE, HUGE SPOILERS FOR AND JUST LIKE THAT…. EPISODE 1!) The first episode of AJLT shows Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Big (Noth) enjoying a happy home life. In one scene, Carrie returns after a long day to their palatial apartment just in time to help her husband prepare a dinner of Copper River sockeye salmon. (Yes, Big notes that Carrie—who used to keep sweaters in her stove—has come as long way as a home cook!) They put on an old Todd Rundgren album, as they started a new tradition during the COVID-19 lockdown of listening to a different one of Big’s vinyl records every night, and they have a fun, flirtatious time dancing around and drinking wine. In other words, it’s what Carrie and Big are like when they’re at their best. And also, perhaps tellingly, like how they were together on Sex and the City’s Season 4 finale episode, “I Heart NY,” right before Big left by moving to Napa. Meanwhile, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has asked Carrie to postpone her plans to travel to the Hamptons with Big so that she can attend daughter Lily’s piano recital. Carrie asks Big if he’s OK with pushing back their trip and he agrees, but he doesn’t want to attend the recital; instead, he stays home and gets in a hardcore Peloton workout. While Carrie is at the recital, Big finishes his workout, falls to the floor and experiences a heart attack. He is still alive by the time Carrie gets home, but as she says in a voiceover while holding Big in her arms, “And just like that… Big died.” (WARNING: AJLT EPISODE 2 AND EPISODE 3 SPOILERS!) While Episode 2 deals primarily with Big’s funeral, Episode 3 finds Carrie and Miranda attending the reading of Big’s will—and discovering that he’s left $1 million to Natasha (Bridget Moynahan), his wife before Carrie. Afraid that Big regretted choosing Carrie over Natasha, Carrie tracks down Big’s ex, but ultimately finds out that the two were not in touch and that even Natasha doesn’t know why Big left her the money. Carrie surmises that it was Big’s way of saying that he was sorry for what he did to her. Are there more big Big secrets we’ll find out about in future episodes? It seems possible; after all, Carrie still hasn’t cracked the password on Big’s computer, which has got to hold some more secrets, no?
Why does Big die on the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That…?
Not surprisingly, SATC/AJLT fans are still flabbergasted by the premiere’s surprise ending—and many are asking why the reboot had to start off on such a somber note that, come to think of it, didn’t feel all that realistic; why didn’t Carrie dial 911, or go get Big’s nitroglycerin pills? Since AJLT’s Dec. 9 premiere, Noth has sat down with Access to spill the beans about his character getting killed off—admitting that he initially wasn’t down with the decision to do away with Big and that series producer Michael Patrick King had actually thought about killing Big in the first Sex and the City feature film. “I originally called him and said, ‘Michael, I’m not doing this… I don’t wanna die,’” Noth confessed. However, he eventually came to realize, “It’s not Sex and the City, it’s And Just Like That… and in that story, Big’s gotta go.” Or does he? Cryptically, Noth suggested to Access that Big might stick around AJLT in some shape or form: “Nobody ever really dies because you’re always in the minds of people, so there may be a little more Big to come.” Even before Noth’s Access interview, King had admitted that Big’s demise was his idea. “It was [my idea] because I wanted to see if it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” King told Entertainment Tonight. “And I wanted to do an amazing arc for Carrie and Sarah Jessica, because I knew she could be amazing playing both the dark and the light. I wanted everyone to see that, and I wanted to write that. Also, the thesis of the show and Carrie says it in the finale voiceover, everybody thinks it’s about Big calling and saying I’m coming, but really the most significant challenging relationship of all is the one you have with yourself… I [also] really wanted to see what happens when your friends show up for you when the most difficult thing happens in life, which is a death.” King has also defended Carrie’s actions after she did nothing to try to save Big’s life. “That’s a split second before she ran over to him. We made it be what they felt, time stopped, that’s not real time. Time stopped,” he explained. “If it had happened to me, I wouldn’t know if the first thing to do was to get him up. All she keeps saying is, ‘Help me, help me, help me, get up John, help me.’ She’s still trying to make him be alive.” As for the plan that Big would die in AJLT, reportedly, that was likewise the plan for Noth’s character in the never-made Sex and the City feature film. Back in 2018, word got out that Big’s fate would’ve played out quite similarly in the SATC3 script. As Origins podcast host James Andrew Miller put it back then in a Q&A with Parker and Noth, “It calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower, relatively early on in the film.” Miller also suggested in that interview that SATC castmate Kim Cattrall—who infamously put the kibosh on SATC3 —didn’t like how that movie’s script was “more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”
Will Big be in the new Sex and the City?
One more major question that we’re assuming future AJLT episodes will answer: If Big dies in the series premiere, why have we seen paparazzi pics of Noth shooting other scenes with Parker in New York City and even Paris? On Nov. 7, the two were photographed riding together in a horse-drawn carriage through Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, and the month before, they were spotted on a bridge over the River Seine. That could be because AJLT production including the shooting of fake scenes—which Davis admitted on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert—to keep fans from figuring out the storyline ahead of time. As any SATC fan knows, the original HBO series ended with Big following Carrie to the City of Lights after she moved there with “the Russian,” Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov). That’s where Big famously told her, “Carrie, you’re the one.” So maybe Carrie has some dreams or flashbacks about her knight in shining Italian silk? Guess we’ll have to wait to find out. In the meantime, Big has come back to life… in a new Peloton ad! On Sunday, Dec. 13, the fitness brand debuted a hilarious 40-second spot in which Big relaxes in front of a roaring fire next to real-life Peloton instructor Jess King—who played. Big’s Peloton instructor in the AJLT premiere. Even better, the ad features narration at the end by Ryan Reynolds. Almost exactly two years ago, in December 2019, Reynolds leveraged the controversy another Peloton ad—the one with the wife acting super-grateful that her husband gifted her a Peloton—and turned it into a hilarious follow-up promo for his Aviation Gin. And to assuage any anxieties in the hearts and minds of AJLT fans, in his new Peloton narration, Reynolds insists that Big is still alive. Next, You’ll Never Guess How Much Sex and the City’s Stars Could Make on the Revival—Plus, What They Made on the Original!
