Major spoilers for “XO, Kitty” Season 3.

It’s worth taking a moment to remember what “XO, Kitty” was when it started. Season 1 was essentially a teen rom-com, following the tradition of its parent franchise, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.” The title character, Kitty (Anna Cathcart), follows her long-distance boyfriend to a fancy boarding school in Seoul only to discover he’s dating someone else, and stumbles into a tangle of new feelings and family secrets. It was sweet, relatively contained and felt like a natural extension of the Jenny Han cinematic universe. Three seasons later, the show has evolved into something almost unrecognizable: a sprawling ensemble drama with pregnancy plots, a K-pop world tour, a scheming villain, a Chuseok dinner that blows up the entire friend group and a subway station race to a love confession. Whether that’s a glow-up or a bloat-up depends on the viewer.
Season 3 opens on a romantically charged moment between Kitty and Min-ho (Sang Heon Lee), who (thankfully) officially gets into a relationship by the end of Episode 2. After two seasons of will-they-won’t-they, it’s a relief to skip the preamble. They get together at the start of the term, and the show wisely doesn’t drag out the question that carried Seasons 1 and 2. The actual challenge this season is what comes after: Kitty is working to get into NYU, and Min-ho is building a career as an entertainment manager, which means for the first time, their futures are pulling in different directions and neither of them are quite ready to say what that means for the relationship.
The rest of the gang has their hands full too. Yuri (Gia Kim), once a rich heiress, loses her family fortune in a lawsuit and is forced to start working, even selling off her clothes just to afford the private school tuition. Her arc is genuinely one of the season’s best: stripped of financial security, Yuri has to take risks and dream big on her own terms, eventually working for fashion designer Yisoo (Soy Kim) and winning a design contest. It’s a classic “lose everything, find yourself” story, but Gia Kim sells it. Meanwhile, new arrival Marius (Sule Thelwell) tries to reignite his relationship with Q (Anthony Keyvan), and his pursuit only ends up making Q realize that Jin (Joshua Hyunho Lee) is the one he actually loves. The Marius storyline is the messiest part of the season. He functions mostly as a wrench thrown into other people’s storylines, and his quick pivot from antagonist to redeemed character feels rushed.
The season’s biggest set piece is a Chuseok dinner that goes spectacularly wrong. Secrets and drama simmering at the edges of the table spill over mid-feast, dividing the friend group and forcing every relationship under the microscope. This is peak “XO, Kitty”: emotionally messy, slightly absurd and genuinely fun to watch unravel. The fallout keeps the back half of the season moving. Lara Jean (Lana Condor) eventually fakes Norovirus to fly to Seoul and take care of Kitty after the chaos, which is the kind of sisterly gesture that makes her return feel earned rather than just a cameo. Condor is back as Lara Jean for the first time since the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” films ended in 2021, and her scenes with Kitty are the warmest the show has produced.
The season finale brings everything together in suitably dramatic fashion. Min-ho shows up to Kitty’s surprise birthday party with her mother’s favourite flowers, tells her he cancelled his Los Angeles trip to be there and the two share an unresolved but charged moment on the dance floor. Then, the next day, Min-ho realizes what he actually wants, runs to the subway station to catch Kitty before her flight and the pair swap “I love you’s” in a full rom-com grand gesture moment, ending the season with Min-ho flying to Portland with her for winter break. It’s ridiculous but lovely, which is exactly what this show is best at.
On the family side, Kitty’s cousin Jiwon (Hojo Shin) and Yuri’s half-brother Alex’s (Peter Thurnwald) secret relationship is revealed, and by the finale they are expecting a baby, with Jiwon’s halmeoni vowing to be there for her granddaughter and soon-to-arrive great-grandchild. Jiwon’s promotion to series regular was well-earned, and her storyline gives the season some genuine warmth outside the main romance.
Some things don’t quite work out though. The supporting cast has grown so large that characters like Madison (Jocelyn Shelfo) and Mihee (Sunny Oh) get shuffled around without much purpose. The soundtrack, however, featuring music from aespa, ENHYPEN, NMIXX and SEVENTEEN, gives the show an energy that no amount of plot overcrowding can fully dim.
“XO, Kitty” Season 3 is not a tight or well-crafted piece of television. It is eight episodes of extremely watchable nonsense populated by characters who you eventually grow fond of, set in a school in Seoul that has become one of Netflix’s most reliably entertaining fictional universes. “XO, Kitty” is, at the very least, a fun time.