‘Sex and the City 3’ might really be happening! Here’s what we’d like to see

Yesterday, Sarah Jessica Parker posted a photo to Instagram that caused a wave of rumors about a possible Sex and the City 3. In it, SJP herself is carrying a Little Brown Bag with very Carrie Bradshaw swagger, and the caption: “Well. I guess the cat’s out of the (little brown) bag. As usual, we will keep you posted on every detail as we are able. I’m under a strict gag order until then. Xx, Sj.”

Could it be? Does this mean that there’s a third Sex and the City movie happening? Here’s the post, which clued us in to the possible development:

According to Warner Bros., SJP’s Instagram pic had nothing to do with SATC. “The Instagram post is not in relation to the Sex and the City property,” WB told People. Plus, Parker, who has a shoe line, formed a partnership with Nordstrom and Zappos. Bloomingdales might just be the next department store SJP will be working with.

We’ll always be old-school Sex and the City fans, but we approach the idea of a third movie with, let’s just say, cautious optimism. We kind of lost the core of the series by the time we got through six seasons and two movies, and it was hard to watch the women we loved become hyper-technicolor caricatures of what they once were by the second movie. Look, we don’t entirely blame them. SATC was more than a series, it was an era and it ran a very long and influential course. But if that era is to continue, we have some suggestions for what we’d really like to see next time around.

For one, Sex and the City should primarily focus on the beauty of female friendships.

So much of that was abandoned in the first and second SATC movies. In the first movie, Carrie’s marriage to Big was a substantial part of the plot — one could argue it took away from the true core of the show: the unbreakable bond four women have. The second movie was about maintaining marriage. While the girls took a vacation to Abu Dhabi together in the film’s sequel, their connection seemed strained, somehow. A show about a tight group of women coming to terms with age, with relationships, and with life in New York just didn’t as well translate to the big screen. These weren’t movies about friendship, these were movies about taking part in the idea of friendship when you need a break from your romantic relationship.

SATC 3 should be set in the city. New York City.

A big part of the first SATC movie was set in Mexico, which was fun to watch, since yay, bestie honeymoon! Charlotte drinking contaminated water! Samantha and that bodacious, tempting neighbor! But the exotic location shtick got old in SATC 2. Bringing the girls back to New York is totally key to making a third movie work, because New York is what we talk about when we talk about SATC (I mean, it’s not Sex and the Town, right?). New York is a character, and to abandon it is to write off what we fell in love with in the first place: a fabulous, overwhelming city, a city filled with hope and love and heartbreak good enough for a story.

The movie should just let one of the gals date

By the end of SATC 2, three out of the four ladies had gotten married — and that’s totally fine. That makes sense for Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda, all of whom had either been involved with the same person for many seasons (Carrie and Miranda), or had truly desired the married life (Charlotte). But I just don’t want to see Samantha seeking a monogamous relationship for the sake of it. After telling Smith she wanted to essentially “do her” for awhile, let’s see Samantha do just that.

And finally, if SATC 3 is a thing, let’s steer away from the idea of everyone being unrealistically super-rich.

Not that SATC was realistic to begin with (Charlotte the art dealer somehow can afford a nice apartment by herself in New York? Carrie writes a relationship column and can afford a closet full of Manolo Blahniks?), but the movies really took gaudiness and label obsessions and ran with it. At times, the movies seemed more like ads in a Vogue issue than a real story.

The bottom line: A third SATC could work if the creators keep in mind the reasons we loved the show so much to begin with. In fact, TIME points out that a third installment could even be a way to redeem itself: “A third film would provide the franchise an opportunity to right itself, and to ensure that the final moments of the story of Carrie Bradshaw and her friends aren’t spent on a strange tangent.”

And if this is the case, bring it on, Sex and the City 3.

Images: via, Instagram, Giphy