Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for Netflix’s “XO, Kitty.”
Based on the popular “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” trilogy, “XO, Kitty” is a spin-off series that was released on May 18 that centers around the curious, matchmaking little sister, Kitty Song Covey (Anna Cathcart).
Jenny Han, the American author of the book-turned-movie series, never fails to entangle her fans in the most charming, complicated love stories with heart-winning rising stars. She worked with casting directors and writers to make the perfect mash-up of classic American teen dramas and beloved international Korean dramas. One of the great things about this show is that audiences can jump in blindly without knowing anything about Kitty’s older sister’s love stories as seen in the trilogy. Jenny Han makes this show truly and entirely about Kitty — this show is Kitty’s oyster.
In “XO, Kitty,” fans are able to dive deeper into 16-year-old Kitty’s love life and her transition into womanhood through both good fortunes and troublesome mishaps. In the trilogy’s final installment, “To All the Boys: Always and Forever,” Kitty and her family, Lara Jean (Lana Condor), Margot (Janel Parrish) and her dad (Josh Corbett), visit Seoul, South Korea, where they ask a stranger named Dae (Choi Min-young) to take a picture of them at the Namsan Tower. This is where Kitty met Dae for the first time and instantly fell in love with him. For the next few years, the two lovebirds would be in a long-distance relationship.
As a kickstart to her own spinoff series, Kitty makes an elaborate plan to surprise the love of her life by applying to the Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS), the very school that Dae and all of his best friends attend. On top of this, KISS is also the same school that her Korean mother attended when she was Kitty’s age. Since she died a long time ago, the movie trilogy barely talks about their mother’s past. As she takes this opportunity to learn more about her mother and become closer to her, the audience can finally learn about her mother through Kitty’s eyes.
The series consists of many complex characters with their own compelling storylines, such as Dae’s infamous playboy friend, Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee), who steals everyone’s hearts with his sassy attitude and luxurious peculiarities. As much as he tries to portray himself as a heartless player, he ends up developing a sweet spot for Kitty after falling for her outgoing charisma. Audiences also swoon over Q (Anthony Keyvan), another one of Dae’s best friends, who would be Kitty’s go-to support system through all the ups and downs of her intricate journey of self-discovery and self-love. He would also brings out Kitty’s successful matchmaking skills as she sets him up with cute French boy Florian (Théo Augier Bonaventure) at school.
Then, the show delivers an undeniably complex character — the star-studded it-girl, Yuri (Gia Kim), who has the most twisted and tangled storyline out of all the characters in relation to Kitty’s life. Yuri has a secret relationship with her best friend, Juliana (Regan Aliyah), whom she doesn’t want to tell anyone about due to her family’s high-status reputation and rejection of Yuri’s sexual orientation. To hide this secret, she forces herself to form this fake relationship with Dae, who is her chauffeur’s son, which not only makes her look like she is conforming to the standards of her parents’ idea of a romantic relationship but also enhances the public image of her family’s business reputation by showing how they are accepting a poor family, like Dae’s, into their family.
On top of this crazy love story between Kitty and her friends, there is another whiplash-worthy subplot that involves Kitty’s teachers and KISS’s principal, revealing a larger secret about her mother and her friends during their time at KISS.
Compared to the trilogy, the chemistry between love interests and the portrayal of young love in Kitty’s world does not amount to the significant impact that Lara Jean’s love stories had on their youthful audience. For example, Lara Jean’s story encourages the audience to be more courageous when it comes to love instead of keeping it bottled up or solely expressing it through letters because doing so will not make feelings go away.
One of the prominent themes in the trilogy is that love won’t go away unless shared with another. Something as innocent as writing love letters suggests a cliché, but a cutesy, hopeless romantic mindset allows for the intellectual and romantic growth of a naive, young individual. Unlike Lara Jean’s love letters and life lessons of confrontation with significant people in her life through innocent conveniences, Kitty’s intellectual and romantic growth requires so many unrealistic factors that the youth can’t resonate with, such as traveling across the country with no parental supervision.
The overall execution and framework of “XO, Kitty” is overwhelming, with all of its intricate twists and turns that only led to more drama and little to no development in the storyline and characters. Although the trilogy had three fully developed movies to resolve unanswered questions and enough room for character growth to win over the hearts of the fans, the series still has time to accomplish those essential themes of life and make them significant to the way the youth see how love fits in their future.
For lack of a better word, the series is cringey. It includes overplayed tropes and sequences, like everything that was portrayed in Min Ho’s “sex dream” sequence. Both Min Ho and the viewers were disturbed but nevertheless entertained. However, it is imperative to explain that the show is intended to perform at a great level of cringe because all the cliché romantic tropes and exaggerated drama scream satire and pure entertainment for watchers to enjoy and have fun. So, in the end, the show did not fail to entertain audiences and bring laughs all around.
To say the least, this plot is very messy — an overwhelming web of dramatized romance and familial mysteries. Nonetheless, the strikingly charming portrayal of LGBTQ+ representation and the romantic coming-of-age story and self-discovery in “XO, Kitty” are extremely entertaining and binge-worthy.
Cameryn Nguyen is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the spring 2023 quarter. She can be reached at camerynn@uci.edu.
