Since Big’s death, Carrie Bradshaw has been trying to reinvent herself — but with each new episode of And Just Like That…, it feels like she’s just running in circles. Her brief fling with the podcast producer was more distraction than romance. Then came the long-anticipated reunion with Aidan — which, for a moment, seemed like a mature reconnection between two former lovers meant for a second chance. But as soon as they started actually spending time together, the polished surface of the “one who got away” fantasy began to crack.

Fans — perhaps guided by the writers themselves — watched the idealized image of Aidan fall apart in real time. He’s now a confused man, torn between the life he built without Carrie (including his kids) and his reluctant attempt to revive a love that belonged to another time. He’s not a bad guy — far from it — but he’s not perfect either. His actions, like asking Carrie to wait five years until his youngest son grows up, reveal a controlling, emotionally conflicted side that borders on selfish.

And just when we thought Carrie might take some time alone (and maybe, just maybe, grow from everything she’s been through), a new face appears: Duncan Reeves, the mysterious British neighbor and bestselling author currently stuck in writer’s block while attempting to pen a biography of Margaret Thatcher. We still know very little about him — beyond his obsessive need for silence and his inverted work schedule — but the red flags are already familiar to anyone who remembers Carrie’s past relationships.

The comparisons to Jack Berger are impossible to ignore. Berger — the boyfriend who broke up with Carrie via post-it — was also a writer, insecure, and driven by ego and his inability to handle Carrie’s success. Are we looking at another emotionally unavailable, intellectually charming man destined to disappoint?

And Just Like That… seems to be showing us, with more subtlety than Carrie can be stuck in a pattern — perhaps without even realizing it. She seems to keep chasing the same type: creative, eccentric, a little tortured. Someone who must be “figured out.” But why? After so many losses, breakups, and even therapy, why is she still orbiting the same archetypes?

The answer may lie in what the series tries to conceal beneath designer clothes and newly renovated apartments: Carrie has matured on the outside, but inside, she still struggles to truly understand herself. Grieving Big changed her — but maybe only on the surface. And even as an older woman, she still seeks in romance the kind of emotional validation that the original Sex and the City already portrayed as problematic.

Instead of choosing partners who add to her life, Carrie seems drawn to men she needs to save, decode, or win over — as if real love must always come with pain and uncertainty.

With Duncan Reeves now in the picture, a new love triangle is forming — and the drama is just beginning. Aidan, Carrie, Duncan: Is any one of them truly what she needs? Or is the real love story And Just Like That… should be telling the one where a woman finally learns to be okay on her own?