‘XO, Kitty’ shocking ending, explained

The concept of a spin-off of Netflix’s original To All the Boys film series was always a risk, but it paid off wonderfully in the form of XO, Kitty.

The charming series arrived on Netflix in mid-May 2023, and quickly caught fire among fans of the franchise. The story leans into the same romantic, zany vibes of the other To All the Boys entries. It follows returning character Kitty Covey, who’s finally putting all that experience in love matching to work on her own romantic life. After traveling across the world to reunite with Dae, her long-distance boyfriend, Kitty faces disappointment, rejection, and a gradually more complicated love triangle — or is it a love square, at this point?

That’s how Netflix itself describes the complicated romantic situation Kitty finds herself in by the end of the season. After spending most of the 10-episode debut season with one eye on Dae and the other drifting ever more toward Yuri, XO, Kitty ended with an unexpected shocker. Fans are still reeling from the unexpected developments contained within the season’s final moments, thanks to Jenny Han’s impeccable grasp of the romantic comedy. This isn’t a boy meets girl, perfect match story, people. Love is simply more complicated than that.

That surprising XO, Kitty ending, explained

By the end of season one of XO, Kitty, our rom-com heroine, is split between not two, but three potential love matches. After spending most of the season working to get Dae back, the perky Kitty polishes off the final episode broken up with the boy she moved across the world to be with, and having just missed her shot at another potential romance.

See, mid-way through the season, as Kitty is working to iron things out with Dae, she starts to develop feelings (other than simple hatred) for her rival, Yuri. While the two spend much of the first half of the season at odds, Kitty starts to realize that her feelings for Yuri go much deeper. She starts to wonder if the two of them might have a future together, only to miss her shot at telling Yuri how she feels.

That leaves her, at the end of the season, with a recent breakup, no confessed feelings, and a long trip back home to look forward to. That’s before she arrives at the airport, recently single, and in a kismet moment made for rom-com television, sees Yuri. Her moment to admit her feelings feels at hand, only to be dashed when it’s revealed that Yuri is at the airport to pick up her girlfriend. Another opportunity lost.

It seems, for a moment, like XO, Kitty is simply taking a hard left turn from the typical rom-com offering. Instead of ending the season with Kitty in a relationship, bubbly and excited for what is to come, it allows her story to conclude — for now, at least — with Kitty instead examining herself, her own feelings, and her hopes for the future. She doesn’t need a partner to move forward, and that lesson is vital in a show like this.

But that’s not the end. While it feels like the show was gearing up to end on that note, XO, Kitty couldn’t let us off that easy, now, could it? It took that left turn and made it into a full-blown U-turn, by tossing Min Ho back into the mix. The studley, affluent boy served as a bit of a tease in trailers for the show, but it turns out he wasn’t just a tease after all. He admitted, in the season’s final moments, that he has feelings for Kitty, and in the process transformed her complicated love triangle into a square.

The season leaves off with Kitty facing quite the romantic hurdle. She and Dae are broken up, but that doesn’t eliminate her feelings for him, and she’s only just come to understand her feelings for Yuri. Now, with Min Ho tossed into the mix, her heart is getting pulling in three separate directions. The next season of the series — assuming Netflix veers from its trend of cancelations and renews it — will surely see things get even more complicated for Kitty, and we can’t wait.