Carrie Bradshaw has a lot of exes, few of them good. But among that pile of dudes—from the kinky politician played by Jon Slattery to Berger the Post-It bandit—one rises above as the supreme good guy: Aidan Shaw. He was a furniture-maker, a dog-lover and a cigarette-hater, determined to turn Carrie into the woman of his Wife Guy dreams. (Which, some argue, makes him Sex and the City’s worst man!) Alas, Aidan and Carrie never made it work, despite reports that Aidan was going to return in the 2021 HBO Max reboot series And Just Like That. However, that might change in the show’s upcoming second season. According to Deadline, actor John Corbett is reportedly set to join the series, bringing Aidan back into Carrie’s life.

Per the outlet, Corbett will have a multi-episode arc in the show’s second season, which does not yet have a release date. Reps for HBO Max and Corbett declined to comment when reached by Vanity Fair. And Just Like That’s second season will star core leads Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis. (Reminder that Kim Cattrall will never return.) 

Aidan’s purported return isn’t completely unexpected. Back when And Just Like That was first gearing up, Corbett himself said told Page Six, “I’m going to do the show.” He teased his return as “very exciting,” and added that he “might be in quite a few” episodes of the reboot. That, of course, turned out to be a lie. Per the show’s writers, Corbett’s return was never part of the plan. “John Corbett should be writing personal apology notes,” show writer Julie Rottenberg told Deadline. “We didn’t say anything [about him returning].” Maybe Corbett was having a little fun at Page Six’s expense; maybe was manifesting Aidan’s return through the cosmic power of the press. Either way, it seems like Aidan could finally return to Manhattan. 

Because, let’s be real, there’s no way Aidan still lives in the city, right? If we had to guess where he was during the events of And Just Like That, we imagine he was somewhere out in farmland Connecticut, making furniture out of a repurposed barn at his $2.4 million shabby-chic homestead with a neo-hippie partner who heads legal for Goop. But maybe his kids—Tate, Homer, and Wyatt—are all at varying stages at NYU and Columbia. And maybe he bumps into Carrie while taking Tate out for a stroll around the Upper East Side. “Your old man used to spend a lot of time up here,” he’d tell Tate, his eyes scanning the townhouse numbers, double-taking at all the curly-headed blondes walking down the street. “A lot o’time…”

Either way, bringing Aidan back is the kind of old-school toxicity that And Just Like That needs. After killing Mr. Big via Peloton and rendering Steve semi-senile, then sidelining him for Che, Aidan might be able to give the show that classic Sex and the City spark.