XO, Kitty took the world by storm in the midst of summer last year. I decided to take up the opportunity to rewatch the show over Christmas and the main character Kitty Song Covey stood out to me. Anna Cathcart as the show’s main protagonist, Kitty Song Covey, raised many questions about self-identity and being a woman of colour in society today.

The character’s first appearance was in the well-known franchise To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, in which she played matchmaker to her older sister Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) and her ‘fake boyfriend’ Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). In XO, Kitty, she is in her own love dilemma and she navigates her way through her year abroad at the Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS).

At first, Kitty is shown to be an independent young woman, with a strong determination, and will to go on her year abroad at KISS to find her long-distance boyfriend Dae (Minyeong Choi). However, this whirlwind adventure makes her raise numerous questions about her identity. Kitty is put to the test through the many people she meets at KISS, including her frenemy Min-Ho (Sang Heon Lee) and new best friends Q (Anthony Keyvan) and Yuri (Gia Kim).

Kitty’s first obstacle within the show is when she finds out that Dae had another girlfriend behind her back, without knowing the full story and reasoning as to why this was. As she tries her best to navigate her way through this betrayal, her questioning of self-identity is also raised. As her mother went to KISS also, she tries her best to find out if her mother had a previous love story in Korea before finding her father.

In XO, Kitty, the theme of raising the question of self-identity and where you truly come from really stood out to me through the character of Kitty Song Covey. Kitty felt like she could never equally balance her Korean American identity, she either had to be more of one or the other. I found Kitty to be very relatable in that sense, as although we are born and brought up in Western society, we always find ourselves to be pulled back to our roots one way or another.

One of my favourite scenes of Kitty is when she replicates her grade picture at the end of the show, reminiscing back to one of the first scenes of the first To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before film. She takes her picture with her ‘Grade 11’ sign, which shows how much she has grown and matured throughout the whole show.

With the next season of the show announced, I cannot wait for what is to come with Kitty’s character. She has already shown so much growth and potential in the first season of the show, so I only hope good things are coming for her. I have been made to feel really seen through the character of Kitty Song Covey.

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