XO, Kitty is an American series, a spin-off of the To All the Boys I've Loved Before films. The series was created and executive produced by Jenny Han, who wrote the To All the Boys novels.
Four years after the events of To All the Boys: Always and Forever, Katherine "Kitty" Song-Covey (Anna Cathcart) is now starting her junior year of high school. She applies to KISS (the Korean Independent School of Seoul), where her late mother used to go and where her current Korean boyfriend, Dae-heon Kim (Choi Min-young), is enrolled at. After convincing her father and his new girlfriend to let her study there, she packs her bags and tries to make it in South Korea by herself.
The cast also includes Quincy "Q" Shabazian (Anthony Keyvan), an American student and athlete who is one of Dae's roomates; Min-ho (Sang Heon Lee), a self-centered playboy and Dae's other roommate; Yuri Han (Gia Kim), daughter of KISS's principal; Alex Finnerty (Peter Thurnwald), a Korean-born Australian professor at KISS; and Juliana (Regan Aliyah), Yuri's secret girlfriend.
The first season was released on May 18, 2023. A month later, it was renewed for a second season.
Tropes
- All Love Is Unrequited: By the end of Season 1, Kitty develops feelings for Yuri. She even says that she feels like her heart is getting ripped out of her chest whenever Yuri talks to her girlfriend, Juliana. Meanwhile, Min-ho gets a crush on Kitty and Dae is still in love with Kitty.
- Amicable Exes: In "OTP", Kitty and Dae both agreed to end their relationship amicably, recognizing each other as their respective first love.
- Betty and Veronica: By the end of season 1, our heroine Kitty (the Archie) has to choose between the sweet, working-class Dae, as well as the the haughty, rich Yuri (whom she's fallen for) and Min-ho (who has fallen for Kitty).
- Bisexual Love Triangle: One eventually develops between Kitty, Dae, Min-ho, Yuri, and Juliana. Kitty is targeted by both Dae and Min-ho, while Kitty herself loves Dae but at the same develops a deep crush on Yuri, who is lesbian and in love with her girlfriend Juliana.
- But Not Too Foreign: Kitty is half-Korean half-White American, and her issues of never really fitting into Korean culture, something that the films only hint at, are fully explored here. Her teacher Alex is fully Korean but was adopted by an Australian couple as a baby, so Korean culture is just as foreign to him. Yuri is mentioned to have been spent most of her studies overseas, hence why although she is fluent in Korean, she prefers to speak in English.
- Closet Key: Although at first, Kitty views Yuri as a mean girl who stole her boyfriend Dae, Kitty develops a crush on Yuri and dreams about kissing her. However, Yuri is still in love with her girlfriend, Juliana.Kitty (about Yuri): Why does it feel like I’ve been zapped by a million volts of electricity when I look at her?
- Closet Gay:
- Yuri and her girlfriend, Juliana, are both closeted.
- Zig-zagged with Q. He's not very loud and proud about being gay in South Korea, but he explains to Kitty that although South Korea isn't the most accepting place, he's pretty much out when he's in South Korea. When he visits his family in Iran and the Philippines, however, he pretends to be straight.
- Coming-Out Story:
- Yuri is a closeted lesbian. But by the end of the season, she has come out to her mom.
- Kitty starts out the series as "straight." Even Yuri believes that Kitty is straight, assuring a jealous Juliana of this. However, Kitty realizes that she's definitely not straight when she starts to fall in love with Yuri.
- Fun with Acronyms: The school that Kitty got into is called "KISS" which stands for Korean Independence School of Seoul.
- The Ghost: Aside from archive footage flashbacks from the previous films, Kitty's older sisters Margot and Lara Jean, plus Peter Kavinsky, don't appear despite being referenced a few times. In "LFG", Kitty contacts Margot to track Juliana, though we never actually see her.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All of the episodes are titled after acronyms.
- In-Series Nickname: Aside from Kitty (full name Katherine), we have Dae (short for Dae-heon) and Q (short for Quincy).
- Interclass Friendship: Yuri comes from an incredibly wealthy family and she's besties with Dae, the son of their driver. As far as the public knows, they're also dating, making this a shocking (but fake) Interclass Romance.
- Lipstick Lesbian:
- Yuri is a girly girl who loves pink, and she's also a lesbian, though she tries to hide it from the rest of the world.
- Juliana is also feminine and she's in a relationship with Yuri.
- Long-Distance Relationship: At the beginning of the series, Dae (who's living in South Korea) and Kitty (who's living in the USA) are in one.
- Love Dodecahedron: Kitty and Dae are in love with each other, but Dae is stuck in a forced relationship with Yuri, who is in love with Juliana. Then Min-ho falls for Kitty, who realizes that she is not that straight after all when she falls for Yuri.
- Long-Lost Relative: Kitty finds out that her teacher Alex, who is Korean but was adopted by white Australian parents as a baby, is looking for his real parents. She soon believes that he may be hers. It turns out that he is Yuri's maternal half-brother, a result of a Teenage Pregnancy that her mother is ashamed about.
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: The manly jock Q and his effeminate boyfriend Florian play this dead straight.
- Mistaken for Cheating: In "SNAFU", Dae and Min-ho spot Florian possibly cheating on Q with another man. In reality, he is cheating — the finals that is, as he has the man give him the answer sheets so he can ace the tests.
- Parental Neglect: Yuri's parents are distant to her: her father is too preoccupied with his hotel business, and while her mother means well, she is still emotionally neglectful.
- Proud Beauty: When Kitty calls him a "pimple-faced playboy," the only part Min-ho objects to is "pimple-faced," claiming that he hasn't had a blocked pore in four years.
- "Rediscovering Roots" Trip: Moving to South Korea is this for the half-Korean Kitty.
- Race Fetish: Min-ho accuses Kitty of chasing after every Korean guy as if they're Pokémon and turns her down. He's wrong, though — she's half-Korean herself, and at this point she has no interest in Min-ho at all; she's just upset about Dae, whom she's been dating for years. She promptly tells Min-ho to get over himself.
- Race for Your Love: "OTP" has Dae racing towards the airport to meet Kitty, who is about to return to the States. In a markedly more realistic depiction of this trope, he manages to catch up with her while still at the terminal, as opposed to inside the plane. However, Min-ho does catch up with Kitty while in the plane (admittedly as a passenger), where he confesses his feelings for her.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: In contrast to its predecessor films, which take place in the United States (although the Song-Covey girls do visit South Korea in the third film, which is how Kitty meets Dae), this series takes place almost entirely in South Korea.
- Sequel Hook: The season 1 finale has a few. Yuri calls Ji-na to ask her not to expel Kitty, although it's unknown whether she succeeds. Kitty reads her mother's letters and realizes that while she did not fall in love with Professor Lee, she did fall in love with a certain "Simon". And the last but not least, Kitty boards the plane back home only to see Min-ho tagging along and confessing his love for her.
- Shirtless Scene:
- In the third episode, Dae suddenly takes off his formal suit in favor of a T-shirt while arguing with Kitty, which shocks the latter enough for her to avert her eyes.
- Min-ho's Dream Sequence in "BYOB" has him preparing breakfast while shirtless.
- Q has a couple of scenes where he works out in the dorm room while shirtless.
- Taking the Kids: Florian's parents are divorcing, and and only let him live in Seoul if he can ace his studies, or else his mother will take him to her native Greece, where he will be raised by his strict Greek Orthodox grandparents and possibly remain closeted for the rest of his life.
- Time Skip: Set four years after To All the Boys: Always and Forever. Kitty, whom we last saw was an elementary school student, is in high school. Her older sisters have been out of the house for years; Margot resides in London, while Lara Jean is implied to have graduated from college and living together with Peter.
- Unrequited Love Switcheroo: "Love" is probably too much, but Madison spends most of Season 1 obsessed with Min-ho, who has a begrudging friends-with-benefits arrangement with her. However, when Min-ho decides he wants to pursue a deeper relationship with her, she turns him down.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Kitty and Min-ho practically spend the entire series snarking and making jabs at each other, even after he falls in love with her. Min-ho's friendship with Dae and Q is also this; he's that kind of person.
- We Used to Be Friends: Eve Song and Ji-na Lim were friends during school, but they eventually drifted apart when Eve returned to the United States. Ji-na's reactions and body language suggest that they parted on bad terms, which Kitty and Yuri are eager to find the reason why. It is revealed that Ji-na deliberately distanced herself from Eve because of her teenage pregnancy, which Eve knew about. Since she has to maintain a good image as a principal of a prestigious school, she wants to ignore everything about her past altogether.
