Wait, Why Wasn't Aidan In And Just Like That??

The season finale of And Just Like That… premiered on Thursday, and while viewers were distracted throughout the season by a great many controversies on and off-screen — Chris Noth‘s sexual assault allegations, the way Samantha’s absence was handled, Miranda’s storyline and the whole Che Diaz of it all — a lot of fans noticed something that wasn’t addressed.

Wasn’t Aidan Shaw supposed to be in this show???

Last year John Corbett spilled that he was not just returning for the Sex And The City revival, he teased to Page Six that he “might be in quite a few” episodes. Naturally that led to speculation that Carrie and Aidan’s relationship might be rekindled. That was, in fact, one of the first clues we had that Carrie and Mr. Big might not end up together, that he might even be killed off. Despite the fact that theory turned out to be accurate, the return of Aidan never materialized. So… what happened??

Showrunner Michael Patrick King told Deadline on Thursday they had never planned on bringing back Aidan for this season! He explained:

“The fact of the matter is, we never said anything about Aidan… We always try to be very restrained and look at the reality of what people are experiencing and it has nothing to do with Aidan coming or not coming. It really just felt like this was a lot for Carrie. This season was a lot. We wanted to get her through this and into the light — the last episode is called Seeing the Light. We wanted to get her out. [Aidan’s return] is a big story line that everybody at home wrote that we had never intended.”

Huh. So when Sarah Jessica Parker got all cagey about Aidan’s reappearance, she wasn’t just trying to keep spoilers to a minimum after all!

Of course, King didn’t discount the idea of bringing back Aidan in the future, even noting the palpable chemistry between the actors:

“No, there’s nothing old news about Sarah Jessica Parker and John Corbett as actors and beings and interests.”

Corbett wasn’t the only actor who was supposedly going to be on AJLT only to never appear at all. Broadway star Isaac Powell was announced as a series regular back in July 2021, playing “George, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology.” What happened there?

Sources tell Us Weekly the Dear Evan Hansen actor had “scheduling conflicts with another job” and had to bow out. Though we guess they didn’t replace him because as viewers will note, there was no “George, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology.” We guess the character wasn’t that important if they were able to change it up at the last minute like that.

And hey, it made more time for Che Diaz!

[Image via HBO Max.]