Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
XO Kitty Season 3 is all about protagonist Kitty Covey planning on having an amazing last year at KISS (Korean Independent School of Seoul). She is armed with a ‘Senior Sunset List’, and the primary agenda is to clear things with the hot Min Ho, so they can have an epic second kiss. Will they be ‘end game’ or not? That’s pretty much the hook for this XO Kitty season.
Anna Cathcart is adorable as lead kitty, and also quite annoying when she tries to play matchmaker or be a busybody in general. The creators are just not able to steer clear from the cliched tropes of teen romances, including one familiar twist that I usually hate: bring in an ex to stir shit up.
Also Read: ‘XO, Kitty’ Season 2 Review: Crushes, Cousins, Chaos, & K-pop
Still, there’s plenty to like about XO, Kitty, largely because the show is packed with likable characters. That includes Kitty’s gorgeous love interest Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee), her adorable best friend Q (Anthony Keyvan) who is thankfully still going strong with fellow athlete Jin (Joshua Hyunho Lee), and former crush-turned-friend Yuri (Gia Kim), now navigating a dramatic ‘riches to rags’ journey.
Unfortunately, Kitty doesn’t get to have an epic senior year romance with Min Ho, even though they’re very much into each other, and there are some cute moments between the two. If you remember XO Kitty season 2, Min Ho is assigned by his father (Philippe Lee) to become manager for classmate turned rising K-pop idol Eunice (Han Bi Ryu). So Kitty awkwardly struggles to fit into his starry life of music, red carpets, and K-pop spotlight.
Oh also, there is no sign of anybody studying in XO Kitty Season 3, even though they’re all in their senior year and should be freaking out over grades and college applications. Kitty does mention something about being confused over where she should study, but it’s clearly not as important as getting Min Ho to ‘define’ what is going on between them.
XO, Kitty Season 3 also introduces a new “bad boy” character, Marius (Sule Thelwell), who apparently gets to return to KISS simply because he feels like it (seriously, is transferring schools that easy?) and is great friends with the older students. Not too surprisingly, Marius isn’t exactly fond of Kitty and quickly begins creating chaos within the friend group. He even manages to cause a serious rift between Q and his boyfriend Jin.
Beyond the central ‘will Kitty end up with Min Ho’ question, the XO Kitty Season 3 does not have any interesting sub-plots. It’s just rich kids doing fancy things, like designing clothes for runways, handling K-pop idols, running restaurants, being K-pop idols themselves, or planning to travel around the world in their yacht. It’s barely relatable, often annoying, with unnecessary twists and contrived emotional turning points. Eunice having a hard time handling her new found K-pop fame is probably the only realistic thread in this season, even though it’s barely explored.
Even Lana Condor’s much teased cameo in the trailer, which I was looking forward too, turned out to be a cliched little sequence, which does very little to generate any excitement. Although for long time fans of the ‘To All the Boys…’ films, it would be nice to see Condor playing the wise old senior Covey to her often lost sister.
The creators probably should’ve given the supporting characters more space, because that might’ve made the show even more entertaining. But even though it’s riddled with flaws, the world of XO, Kitty remains flashy, colorful, and brimming with pretty people and adorable friendships, so honestly, it still works as a guilty pleasure watch. I’d pick this franchise over shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty any day.
Watch XO Kitty on Netflix.
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