When Miranda declared 'I'm in a rom-com!' many of us watching And Just Like That, immediately assumed that she was hurtling towards heartbreak. However, in the AJLT finale, Miranda got her happy ending: after Che revealed she was heading to LA via a musical number (the less said about that, the better) Miranda decided to follow her heart and go with Che, instead of pursuing an internship in New York.
For fans already struggling to accept Miranda’s transformation from the sensible cynic we knew in SATC to a reckless romantic in AJLT, her decision to ditch an internship with Human Rights Watch to follow Che to LA, was the final straw.
Many pointed out that it smacked of hypocrisy, too, given she was so hard on Carrie when she decided to follow Petrovsky to Paris in the final season of SATC. When Carrie asks Miranda, ‘What are you gonna do in LA all day? Sit in an audience and laugh?’ it’s almost a direct reversal of when Miranda shouted at Carrie: What are you gonna do [in Paris]… eat croissant?
According to the AJLT The Writers Room podcast, Miranda and Che's relationship wasn’t going to survive and for much of the writing process they planned to split them up. ‘We were building toward Miranda realising: I have to choose myself,' says writer and exec-producer Julie Rottenberg. 'And then that suddenly felt like the expected thing. ‘
Throughout AJLT, many fans have been frustrated that Miranda has become a completely different person – but the writers have defended her right to change and grow. 'I felt like Miranda as a character all these years has been so many great things but she’s also been very rigid and following so many rules,' says writer Elisa Zuritsky. 'At a certain point I think she locked herself into a box that she needed to break out of. That felt exciting.’
Although it might be jarring to see a new side to Miranda – perhaps a more annoying one, too – why are we so invested in Miranda staying the same? Does she have stay inside her ‘sensible’ box? Why can’t she stop letting her head rule her heart? For show runner Michael Patrick King ‘the conversation in the bathroom [with Carrie] is Miranda saying, "Why can't I be this new person?"'
It's always hard when a friend makes a life decision you weren’t expecting, that seems completely out of character, but shouldn’t we give people the space to evolve, and try something new, even if we don’t totally agree with what they’re doing?
As writer Rachna Fruchbom wisely points out in the podcast: 'You don’t just come of age one time at 13 or whatever. There’s many chapters and you can come-of-age at any of those chapters. Even it might feel shocking to people, there’s so much help in Miranda’s story.’
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