XO, Kitty Season 2 Perfects The American K-Drama

There’s a moment early on in Season 2 of Netflix’s XO, Kitty when Kitty Song-Covey (Anna Cathcart) first spots her current crush and BFF Yuri (Gia Kim) after months apart. For the Portland, Oregon, transplant, who was coming to terms with her romantic feelings and sexuality at the end of Season 1, it’s a heartstopping experience, one that we don’t only see, but can feel through the screen. Distinct in tone and visuals, the camera lingers on Yuri’s face, and as the music swells, time seems to stop — perfectly mimicking the slow-motion, flower-petal moments often found in traditional K-dramas. As the friends hug, you can practically feel Kitty’s heart swelling. It's twirl-your-hair, kick-your-feet, and squeal-at-the-top-of-your-lungs thrilling. And it was the same experience for the cast to film.

“It's so fun getting to play with those really dramatic little moments,” Anna Cathcart tells Refinery29. “I think Season 2 really plays up on that.” Which is true. While the first season, which follows To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before character as she studies abroad at South Korea’s Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS), sets up Kitty’s romantic paramours with the aplomb they deserve, Season 2 takes it to the next level. Using perfectly-timed spotlights, fans for windswept hair, and sparkling visual effects, the show indicates exactly when — and who — Kitty is forging a romantic connection. It’s a sweet nod to the genre that inspired and influenced the series, and has since become a global phenomenon. But, as Cathcart herself has noted, the series is far from just another K-drama. Instead, XO, Kitty expertly blends elements of both Korean and American TV shows, giving fans a diverse series that’s uniquely its own. 

For Gia Kim, there’s one essential element that makes a successful K-drama: great romance. “[K-dramas have a] very juicy love story [where the characters] meet in weird circumstances or they're kind of mismatched on the surface, but then they end up falling in love and they're trying to make it work,” Kim says. A K-drama watcher herself (she prefers older series like 2010’s Secret Garden and medical dramas), the actress knows the typical paces of one, including the fact that, in addition to a juicy love story, there needs to be a bit of corniness. You know, the super silly drama that wouldn’t really work IRL, but somehow does on screen. 

“[K-dramas are] heavily into the romantic side and comedy side,” Sang Heon Lee, who plays Min Ho, adds. “[Things that] when people would be watching, [they’d think] that would never happen in real life, but there's something that maybe some people would like to have in their own lives.”

Take, for instance, having your former nemesis show up beside you on your international flight home to declare his love for you (a real experience for Kitty at the end of Season 1). “All the directors and the writers did a deep dive into K-dramas and how they work and why they work,” Kim says of the process, “and they really try to bring elements to each of the episodes that they were directing or writing into it; we could just tell [that] this was definitely taken from some K-drama or K-movie moment.” 

But while traditional K-dramas may speak to a plethora of realities through the lens of the South Korean experience, what makes XO, Kitty, and the second season in particular, so special is the fact that it spotlights a variety of diverse experiences — like Kitty attempting to connect with her heritage and family — creating a uniquely American K-Drama. It’s a reflection of Kitty’s own experiences as someone who is half-Korean and one that speaks to viewers who have also found themselves growing up between cultures and places. 

It’s this merging that resonated with Kim, a South Korean native who considers herself a “third culture kid” having grown up between Korea and Hong Kong and attended an international school. “I loved seeing how the worlds collided and came together because it kind of also represents, personally for me, being from different places and being in between worlds,” she says. “This show was the final product of that.” 

“I do think XO, Kitty, blends those worlds really well, because we have a lot of storylines that might not always show up in traditional K-dramas,” Cathcart adds. “There’s a lot of diversity, there's a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different things happening, [and] I think that's really special because it kind of brings a new take on [the genre].” Not to mention, the series shows both Korean and American viewers the beauty of different languages, with characters speaking in everything from English to Korean and Spanish. “It's really cool to see certain scenes fully in Korean and between two Korean characters … being spliced in there with more of a traditional American teen show,” Cathcart says.

For Minyeong Choi, who plays Dae — Kitty’s ex-boyfriend-turned-friend — this representation is extremely important, not only for those who can see themselves in characters like Kitty, but also for those who may have never had to consider not seeing themselves on the silver screen. “When I was just living in Korea, I did not know that [representation is] meaningful and the need [for] it, because we were always represented on Korean TV shows,” Choi, who grew up in South Korea, says. “There's a lot of my friends who [don’t] feel the need and don’t know how it's meaningful to be represented…I want Koreans to know more, too.”

For Cathcart, the unique feeling of seeing yourself for the first time on screen is all too familiar. In a 2021 interview with Refinery29, the then 17-year-old shared the first time she ever saw herself reflected in media: in the pages of graphic novel Guts. “The character in that story has a really specific type of anxiety that I grew up with, and getting to see that in a story and in media, it made me feel so much less alone and made me feel like I'm not crazy that I went through this. It’s not just me who's having this tough experience, other people out there understand me,” Cathcart, now 21, says. The fact that Cathcart has now become that representation to others still blows the actress’ mind. “To think that XO, Kitty can be that for someone else makes me emotional and so, so happy,” Cathcart says. “I know how impactful that is for me, and I don't think it’s something that can be taken lightly. So the fact that I get to maybe, hopefully, be a part of someone else's story in that way and make them feel more understood is something that truly I think I'll always be so honored.”

XO, Kitty Season 2 streams January 16 on Netflix.