‘XO, Kitty’ Season 3 Review: Chaos, Big Feelings, and a Senior Year Worth Rooting For
If there’s one thing XO, Kitty Season 3 understands, it’s that senior years can be chaotic, and we mean that in the best way possible. This new installment has everything we’ve come to love about the series: swoon-worthy romance, long-overdue confessions, messy misunderstandings, friendship and romantic breakups (and makeups), high-stakes academic stress, and yes, more than a few moments that will make you cringe and laugh in equal measure. Add in a special cameo from the one and only Lara Jean (Lana Condor), emotional family moments, and a lot of messy love entanglements (seriously, so many), and you’ve got a season that feels full from start to finish.
It’s dramatic, it’s heartfelt, it’s occasionally ridiculous, and honestly? That’s exactly the point. This is a show that thrives in its heightened, K-drama-inspired world, and Season 3 fully leans into that identity without apology. That’s exactly why, in our opinion, it works.
This season is packed—arguably more than ever before—but instead of feeling overwhelming, it keeps the momentum alive. Every episode throws something new at us, whether it’s midterm stress spiraling into emotional revelations, a senior’s field trip full of ups and downs, a chaotic Chuseok dinner unraveling secrets, a full-blown fashion show powered by friendship and last-minute genius, or an unforgettable birthday party. It truly has it all.
It’s messy, it’s dramatic, and it’s wildly entertaining. And in a world that feels particularly heavy at the moment, there’s something genuinely refreshing about escaping into a universe where the biggest problems are heartbreaks, college applications, unrequited crushes, and figuring out who you’re becoming.
Because that’s what XO, Kitty does best, it turns growing pains into spectacle. But let’s dig into the actual story, shall we?
PSA: From this point forward, there will be spoilers for XO, Kitty Season 3. If you haven’t binged the new season yet, we highly suggest stopping here, opening up Netflix, and coming back once you’re done. You’ve been warned.
XO, Kitty Season 3: Senior Year, But Make It Chaotic
Season 3 wastes no time throwing us back into the whirlwind of Kitty’s (Anna Cathcart) life, picking up right where we left off in Season 2 and immediately diving into emotional territory. It’s senior year, and Kitty has big plans for herself, including a ‘Senior Sunset’ bucket list. That list ranges from figuring out her college future to having a full conversation in Korean with her Imo-Halmoni (Ae Yon Han), to spending a traditional Chuseok with her family and friends, and, of course, defining her relationship with Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee).
But since this is Kitty Song Covey we’re talking about, nothing ever goes according to plan. And what follows is a season in constant motion, with new conflicts, shifting dynamics, and evolving relationships in nearly every episode. Surprisingly, that works in its favor. Instead of feeling overcrowded, the sheer amount of plot keeps everything moving forward with purpose. There’s always something happening, whether it’s academic pressure, career decisions, family drama, or romantic fallout. It mirrors adolescence in a way that feels heightened but honest.
Midterms, in particular, act as more than just academic stress. They become a narrative trigger, forcing Kitty to confront what staying in Seoul actually means for her future. That anxiety simmers beneath everything that follows, shaping her decisions in ways that feel both frustrating and believable. What could have been a simple coming-of-age beat instead becomes the foundation for the season’s central tension: the fear that one wrong move could close the door on the life she’s built at K.I.S.S. and jeopardize the future she wants for herself.
It’s a fear that manifests in impulsive reactions and many missteps, particularly when it comes to her relationship with Min Ho, and ultimately drives one of the season’s most pivotal misunderstandings.
Kitty & Min Ho: A Love Story Worth the Wait
Let’s be real, many of us have been waiting since Season 1 for the MoonCovey ship to finally sail. From their very first interaction at the airport, it felt inevitable that Kitty and Min Ho would be endgame. The signals were there all along, and XO, Kitty Season 3 finally gives us what we’ve been asking for: Kitty and Min Ho together as a couple. Their relationship is sweet, awkward, supportive, and complicated in all the ways a love like theirs should be.
What works so well here is how the show allows us to see them adapt to being a couple before it all crashes down and burns. We get to see them try to understand each other, to balance their worlds, to figure out what being together actually means. There’s something incredibly charming about watching them shift from friends to something more, especially as they discover new sides of each other along the way.
That’s not to say their journey is smooth. In fact, it’s anything but. Miscommunication, insecurity, and that major misunderstanding we mentioned earlier derail everything. It’s dramatic, a little absurd, and entirely avoidable, but it also reveals something deeper about Kitty and Min Ho’s dynamic. Trust, or rather the fragility of it, becomes the emotional backbone of their story. Kitty’s insecurity about whether she belongs in Min Ho’s world leads her to assume the worst, while Min Ho’s instinct to protect others through secrecy creates the very distance he’s trying to avoid.
Their breakup mid-season doesn’t stem from a lack of love, but from misaligned expectations: one needing transparency, the other believing trust should be unconditional. But that’s what makes their arc so compelling: it’s messy and frustrating, but it feels real in the heightened reality the show exists in. And yet, the show never loses sight of where it’s going. If anything, XO, Kitty Season 3 reinforces what has long felt inevitable: Kitty and Min Ho are the emotional endgame.
Their story follows a familiar romantic structure—separation, growth, and eventual reconnection—but what makes it land is how clearly the show positions them as each other’s constant, even when they’re apart. The final sequence, with Min Ho chasing after Kitty through Seoul’s subway station and confessing his feelings through a song, leans fully into rom-com magic. It’s big, dramatic, a little over-the-top, and unabashedly sentimental, but that’s the language this show speaks. It doesn’t aim for subtlety; it aims for emotional payoff, and in that sense, it delivers.
When they finally say “I love you” to each other, it feels right. And while part of us wishes the show had explored Kitty and Yuri (Gia Kim) more romantically when it had the chance, the narrative has always pointed toward Kitty and Min Ho ending together. The detours are (were) part of the journey, but the destination has always been clear, and Season 3 fully commits to that.
Love, Lies, and A New Rainbow Character Joins the Gang
If there’s one thing this season has no shortage of, it’s complicated relationships. Beyond Kitty’s personal journey, the season expands its emotional scope through its ensemble, often using relationship conflict as a way to explore broader themes of identity and belonging. The introduction of Marius (Sule Thelwell) is a clear example of this. His arrival at K.I.S.S. immediately shakes things up, and not always in ways we appreciate. We’ll be honest: he had us this close to throwing pillows at our screens. His tendency to stir chaos, especially in complicating Q (Anthony Keyvan) and Jin’s (Joshua Hyuhnho Lee) relationship, made him an instant antagonist in our eyes.
Marius is positioned as a disruptive force right off the bat. He embodies the kind of chaos that the show thrives on, but as the season unfolds, we start to understand him a bit more. As Q himself puts it at some point, Marius is an acquired taste. His actions don’t always land, but they come from a place of unresolved feelings, emotional confusion, and the lingering pull of “what if.” And while that doesn’t necessarily make his actions easier to accept, it does make them more understandable.
The love triangle that forms between him, Q, and Jin is less about choosing between two people and more about figuring out what honesty and commitment actually look like. In fact, Q and Jin’s storyline is one of the most emotionally grounded this season. Their conflict, which is rooted in secrecy, insecurity, and the fear of not being enough, feels painfully real. Watching them fall apart and find their way back together isn’t about resetting their relationship, but about growing into something stronger.
Yuri, Juliana, Praveena, and Finding Yourself Again
Yuri’s arc operates on a different, but equally compelling, level. Her journey this season is one of reinvention. Stripped of her wealth and status, she’s forced to figure out who she is without the safety net she’s always known. And what we love most is that the show doesn’t rush this process. It lets Yuri struggle, fail, and rebuild herself both emotionally and creatively.
Her journey into fashion becomes a metaphor for that reinvention, culminating in a showcase that quite literally pieces together her past and present. The decision to center her designs on transformation—on being torn apart and rebuilt—mirrors her emotional arc in a way that feels thematically cohesive. Watching her piece herself back together is one of the most satisfying payoffs of the season.
And then there’s Juliana (Regan Aliyah).
The dissolution of her relationship with Praveena (Sasha Bhasin) is handled with a level of maturity that stands out within the show’s otherwise heightened tone. Instead of dragging out unnecessary drama, the show allows them to recognize that something isn’t quite right in their relationship and to let each other go with respect. It’s refreshing, and honestly, kind of rare for a teen series.
And that brings us back to Yuri and Juliana. From Season 1, it’s been clear that there’s something too deep between them to just end. And Season 3 leans into that slow reconnection in a way that feels organic and hopeful, reinforcing the idea that some relationships don’t end—they just take time to find their way back. Yuri deserves happiness, and if you’ve been here since the beginning, it’s hard not to feel like Juliana has always been part of that. So long live Yuriana.
Queerness, Identity, and Owning Your Story
One thing XO, Kitty Season 3 continues to do well is normalize queer identity without over-explaining it. Kitty’s bisexuality remains an important part of her character, even while she’s in a relationship with Min Ho. Without making a big spectacle out of it, the show makes it clear that being with a guy doesn’t erase who she is. It’s a quiet but important consistency, especially in a genre that often struggles with that nuance. That kind of representation matters, especially for younger audiences still figuring themselves out.
Across the board, the series embraces queerness as something fluid, messy, and human, allowing its characters to explore love and identity without forcing them into boxes. Whether it’s Q navigating past and present relationships, Yuri redefining herself, or the ever-complicated dynamics between all these rainbow characters, Season 3 continues to center LGBTQ+ experiences in a way that feels authentic to its tone.
Embracing the Chaos (and the Cringe)
What we think elevates XO, Kitty Season 3 is its increased sense of place. One of the most noticeable (and welcomed) improvements this season is the increased use of Korean throughout the dialogue. It’s not just a stylistic choice, but a narrative one. As Kitty becomes more fluent in the language, the show allows that growth to shape how scenes unfold, creating a more immersive experience. In earlier seasons, the setting sometimes felt secondary to the drama, but here, Seoul (and Korea) feels lived-in. The language, the cultural touchpoints, and even the structure of certain storylines (like the Chuseok episode) ground the series in a way that adds texture without slowing it down. It’s a subtle but meaningful evolution, and one the show arguably needed from the start.
Of course, none of this would matter if the show didn’t remain entertaining, and XO, Kitty Season 3 succeeds precisely because it never loses sight of that goal. The pacing is relentless, the stakes are consistently heightened, and the tone walks a fine line between sincerity and self-awareness. There’s an understanding here that the “cringe” often associated with the series isn’t something to avoid, but rather something to embrace. This is a high school drama set in Korea, built on the DNA of K-dramas and teen rom-coms. Expecting it to be subtle or restrained misses the point entirely. The exaggerated emotions, the over-the-top scenarios, the endless love triangles, the cheesy dialogue—they’re not flaws, they’re features.
This season, more than ever, leans into that identity, and we think it’s stronger for it. As we mentioned at the beginning of this review, in a world that can feel overwhelmingly heavy right now, there’s something comforting about escaping into a story where the biggest problems are heartbreaks, college applications, unrequited crushes, and matchmaking your entire friend group. It’s fun. It’s heartfelt. And it knows exactly what it wants to be.
XO, Kitty Season 3 delivers what it promises: a messy, romantic, emotionally charged ride through senior year. It’s not perfect, but it’s endlessly entertaining, surprisingly heartfelt, and full of moments that will make you smile, scream, and maybe even tear up a little. By the time we reach that final scene—with Kitty and Min Ho choosing each other despite an uncertain future—we’re reminded why we keep coming back to this story. It’s about love, growth, and taking chances, even when you don’t have all the answers.
And honestly? We’re not ready to say goodbye just yet. So, taking some lyrics from Min Ho’s romantic song for Kitty… “before we say XO, goodbye”… maybe Netflix can give us Season 4? After all, there’s still one semester left at K.I.S.S., and we definitely need to see what happens next. So here’s to hoping this isn’t the end of this story.
XO, Kitty Season 3 is available to stream now on Netflix. Follow us on X and Instagram for all queer stuff!
Featured Image: Image Courtesy of Netflix.
