Chris Noth Inspired The Sweetest And Just Like That... Moment So Far

Spoilers ahead for And Just Like That... Whether you’ve already watched the Sex and the City reboot or have been keeping up with its impact on the stock market and stationary bikes (how did we get here?!), you likely know that Mr. Big had a heart attack after a Peloton ride — and just like that, uh, died.

Episode 1’s ending was a super jarring moment that viewers still haven’t quite come to terms with. Basically, it either made you really sad or really confused. (As Twitter user lizwalsh_x put it, “WHY THE F*CK DID CARRIE NOT CALL AN AMBULANCE?!”) But before all the drama and heartbreak, the Sex and the City reboot actually featured some sweet moments between Carrie and Big — from dancing to Todd Rundgren while prepping dinner, to the low-key conversation that would ultimately, tragically, be their last. As Carrie’s about to leave for Lily’s recital, sporting those iconic Manolo Blahnik wedding shoes, Big stops to take her all in.

“What?” Carrie asks, noting his lingering gaze.

“I’m just looking at you,” he says, smiling. (OK, someone took notes from A Star is Born’s Jackson Maine, and still... aw!)

Though showrunner Michael Patrick King planned Big’s death from the start, he revealed that this particular line of dialogue was devised by Chris Noth himself. “That was Chris. That’s pure Chris,” King said at a press event, Us Weekly reports. “He just wanted that.”

The moment was also pure Big. Carrie’s on-and-off beau was never the overly emotional, effusive type — but every so often, he’d dish out a simple, swoony line that would almost make you understand what she kept going back for.

As King explained at a junket attended by Bustle, Big’s death — like his final line — was in keeping with a major theme from the original series: Carrie confronting the reality of what she wants but can’t call her own. “Here we are again, and now it’s the same thing,” King said. “She can’t have what she thinks she should have, which is Mr. Big. So what it’s going to do is try to prove the thesis for what the series is about.”

With the hole in her life caused by Big’s absence, Carrie is going to have to navigate the “significant, challenging, emotional” relationship she has with herself and what it means to have had and then lost love, according to King. “What can you keep if it goes away and is it gone, and is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” he said.