Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), left, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) spill the tea on HBO’s “And Just Like That …,” which returned for its third season Thursday. Courtesy of HBO

“She’s messy. It can be messy. But it’s real.”

So says Cynthia Nixon — not just of Miranda Hobbes, the character she’s embodied across almost three decades, but of the show itself. “And Just Like That …,” HBO’s “Sex and the City” revival, has come into its own in season three: less preoccupied with pleasing everyone, and more interested in telling the truth.

Truth, in this case, looks like complexity. Women in their 50s with evolving identities. Not frozen in time, but changing, reckoning, reliving. Queerness that’s joyful but not polished. Grief without melodrama. A pirate shirt with a bl

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