XO, Kitty Shocks Fans With Lara Jean & Peter Breakup Storyline

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers for XO, Kitty Season 3.

After five years, To All the Boys fans finally got an update on Lara Jean Song Covey and Peter Kavinsky’s relationship... although it probably wasn’t what they wanted to hear. The last time viewers saw the couple, they were preparing to head off to opposite coasts for college: Lara Jean going to NYU, and Peter to Stanford University. Although a large part of 2021’s To All the Boys: Always and Forever focused on the duo’s dread over making long-distance work, the movie ended on an optimistic note, with Covinsky joyfully promising that separation wouldn’t tarnish their love. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned.

In Season 3 of XO, Kitty, Lara Jean has graduated from NYU, but she and Peter are still apart — she remained in New York to work at a publishing house, and Peter also stayed in California after graduation. When LJ visits her little sister in Seoul, she tells Kitty that her relationship with Peter has ended, noting that the physical distance evolved into an emotional distance between them as well. The revelation didn’t just crush number-one Covinsky shipper Kitty, but every fan of the beloved couple as well.

But thankfully, Season 3 did end on a hopeful note for LJ and Peter. When Lara Jean calls Kitty on her birthday in the season finale, she tells her sister that she and Peter are working through their rough patch. “Obviously, there’s a lot of things we have to figure out, but we are going to make it work,” Lara Jean says. “Love is worth the risk, right?”

Showrunner Valentina Garza explained that the decision to briefly break Lara Jean and Peter up was in service of Kitty’s own romantic confusion, allowing her to bond on a deeper level with her big sis over the complications of love. But Garza made sure to check in with To All the Boys author Jenny Han before pulling the trigger on such a big relationship update.

“I definitely consulted with Jenny Han about talking about this couple and making sure that she was happy with what was going on there,” Garza told Variety. “We just wanted to have an opportunity for Kitty and Lara Jean to grow from one another. This season, for Kitty, was so much about personal growth, and Lara Jean is having her own growth journey off-screen.”