Are Kitty & Min Ho End-Game? Anna Cathcart & Sang Heon Lee Unpack XO Kitty Season 3

Spoilers ahead for Season 3 of XO, Kitty. Weeks away from the end of winter semester of her senior year at the Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS), Kitty Song-Covey’s (Anna Cathcart) life feels like it’s falling apart. She’s in the midst of a terrible fight with her BFF Q (Anthony Keyvan), broken up with the boy of her dreams, Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee) and has no idea if she’s going to be accepted into New York University, her dream school — or if that’s even what she wants at all.

It’s a lot to process, and as Kitty tells the audience as she recounts her predicament while strutting down the halls of KISS: “A week ago, I thought my life was over. Teenage girls, am I right?” But, this isn’t the Kitty Song-Covey we know and love from Season 1, or even one episode earlier in Season 3. Because, after three seasons of XO, Kitty and three To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before movies, Kitty is finally growing up. For the first time, XO, Kitty isn’t about who Kitty loves, it’s about who she is without them. 

That growth mirrors Anna Cathcart’s own experience. Reflecting on joining the franchise as a teenager, she describes navigating identity, uncertainty, and the value of having strong role models on set — a journey that closely tracks Kitty’s own. “Looking back, I met [Lana Condor] at a time where it was so pivotal in my life,” the now 22-year-old Cathcart tells Refinery29. “I was becoming a teenager. I was learning what that meant, how to find my sense of self.” Going through high school, which Cathcart says can sometimes be “the worst years of your life,” with so much up-in-the-air and such new experiences, “to have a support system and to have a role model like Lana and Janel [Parrish] and everybody from the original movies was so impactful on me as a person and as a young teenager.” 

When Kitty first came onto our screens in 2018’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, she was, like Cathcart herself, truly finding her way. Very much initially boy-crazy, Kitty was the all-seeing, and a bit of a romantic know-it-all. It was Kitty that sent out the initial love letters from her elder sister Lara Jean that kicked off the TATBILB cinematic universe. And since then, audiences have watched Kitty follow her heart — sometimes to disastrous, or at least comically adventurous results. It’s her sometimes impetuous heart that inevitably took Kitty to Seoul, Korea; following in her mother’s footsteps as a bid to get closer to her, but also, essentially, to follow a boy. (Who remembers that Dae/Kitty romance from all the way back in S1?) 

And, for two seasons, Kitty — and the series — has leaned into the romantic chaos we expect from a young adult series; as Kitty has explored different relationships, both romantic and friendly, as a way to learn about herself, her sexuality, and what she’s looking for in a partner. While past relationships helped shape her, Season 3 marks a shift: for the first time Kitty is defining herself outside of them; not through who she’s dating, but through what she wants.

While Kitty initially kicks off this season, and her summer break, clumsily proposing she follow Min Ho on his musical world tour, she inevitably drops those plans to fly to NYC and the aid of her sister Lara Jean. In many ways, though she’s obsessing about Min Ho the entire summer, staging her social media posts to appear like she’s having the best summer ever (who among us hasn’t done that?), she’s focused on her sister and exploring the city she hopes to one day call home. When she returns to Seoul, and finally gets together with Min Ho, that starts to change as they fall into their relationship, with Kitty eventually contemplating staying in Korea after graduation to be with him. 

When they do break up, after a miscommunication of epic proportions (she accuses Min Ho of getting their friend pregnant), that’s when Kitty’s growth really starts to show. Heartbroken, but encouraged by her sister to follow her heart to her next great adventure —independent of the guy she loves — Kitty makes the decision to apply for NYU; knowing that whether or not she and Min Ho end up together, she has to follow her own dreams and put herself first. The rest will work itself out. 

Kitty’s decision to put herself first and apply for NYU might be the culmination of her journey to a more mature outlook, but as her sister Lara Jean notes when she visits Kitty on the heels of her devastating break-up with Min Ho, she’s consistently shown the ways in which she’s grown up throughout this season in the ways she helps others. This maturity is most poignantly on display during Lara Jean’s visit, when their cousin Jiwon (Hojo Shin) — a teacher at the school — reveals she’s pregnant and scared of not having any familial support. In a super sweet moment, it’s Kitty, not Lara Jean the constant fixer-upper, who rushes to comfort her, reassuring her that she’ll always have support in them. “The leaps that you take and the lengths that you go to for others, that's what makes you, you,” Lara Jean later tells Kitty. “And your heart is always in the right place.” Later, Kitty helps foster a reunion between Jiwon and her grandmother; not because she feels like she needs to fix things, but because she wants to ensure everyone’s happiness. 

It’s not just Kitty who’s maturing. Her friends and the circumstances around them are too. While we’re used to tween dramas like Riverdale and 90210 that escalate into absurdity, casting 30-year-olds as 16 and tasking teens with insurmountable — and often outrageous — responsibilities (like, say, hunting down a serial killer that turns out to be your own father), show creator Jenny Han’s series has always been great at meeting the characters on-screen where they’d believably be.  This makes Kitty’s emotional evolution actually land harder. The past three seasons have seen Kitty go a little boy crazy, contemplate her latest relationship status, stress over whether or not she’s going to pass her courses and try to navigate complicated friendships; concerns every 16 to 18 year old should be dealing with. 

But, eventually, those concerns change, or at least evolve to include others. And Kitty and Co. are definitely dealing with a batch of new — and very adult — issues. This season alone sees two pregnancy scares, the difficulties around complex familial dynamics, including disappointing your parents or realizing that maybe they’ve disappointed you, and figuring out who you are after your family goes bankrupt.

But, as anyone who’s gone through the trials and tribulations of young adulthood knows, maturing isn’t linear. Inching towards adulthood doesn’t mean losing all sense of whimsy and fun; both defining trademarks of the series and K-Dramas, which the show is influenced by. Kitty is, after all, only 18. While we’re all for Kitty realizing that romantic relationships aren’t the be-all-end-all of your existence, that doesn’t mean that romance; wanting it and leaning into it, is a bad thing. It can be magical; as the series continues to show every time Min Ho and Kitty lock eyes (it’s steamy and yes you will shriek with glee). 

But now, along with the magic, comes a healthy dose of realism. In the final moments of the season, audiences see Min Ho and Kitty — reunited in an epic subway running montage — boarding a flight for Portland, Oregon. They’re together, they’re happy and they’re off towards their future. “I definitely think if you ask them on that airplane, they would both say they are end game,” Cathcart says. “In that moment, they feel closer than ever and more excited than ever about the future; so much of the theme of season three is embracing the unknown and not knowing what's gonna happen next and finding the joy in that versus the fear in that. And I think that really applies to their relationship as well.”

But, they’re also still in high school. Which means whatever comes next, is probably only temporary, a stepping stone to their future selves. This is a reality both Kitty and Min Ho, as well as the actors who play them, recognize. “You get to see that they started this relationship, but sometimes all good things come to an end,” Lee adds. “And even if it's something bad, there will be an ending. But also I feel that the audience should realize it's okay, this is how life works; but there’s always a better thing to look forward to as well. It's not the end of the world.” Which is ultimately the same conclusion Kitty herself seems to have come to as she accepts her place at NYU and jets off to Portland with Min Ho; that whatever comes next isn’t the be-all-end-all. For the first time, Kitty isn’t chasing the future— she’s learning how to live in the now.