Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s rom-com series, ‘XO, Kitty,’ follows the story of Kitty Song Covey, who moves to Korea to study in the same school her mother attended as a teenager. Kitty is excited to find out who her mother was and what adventures she had in Korea while exploring her own life and romance. She is confident and a romantic at heart, who believes that she will find the love of her life at the school, but she gets a major reality check when she realizes that things are much more complicated in real life.
Her classmates’ first impression of Kitty is not good, and soon, they resort to calling her the Portland Stalker. No matter how much she tries to shrug off this nickname, it sticks, and Kitty has to find a way to live with it. But why do her classmates call her that? Let’s find out.
How Gossip Fueled Kitty’s Stalker Image
Before she moved to Korea to attend the Korean Independent School of Seoul, aka KISS, Kitty Song Covey lived with her family in Portland, Oregon. She visited Korea once when her sister, Lara Jean, was in her final year of school. This is where she met Dae. They exchanged numbers, and their texting and chatting soon turned into something more. They fell for each other and maintained a long-distance relationship for four years.
During this time, Kitty talked about Dae with her family. Her father and stepmother knew about him, and her sisters and friends knew about him. Similarly, Dae spoke about her to his friends, Q and Min Ho. Kitty also knew them by name because she and Dae got used to sharing everything in their life. However, the rest of the students in the KISS didn’t know that Dae and Kitty were in a relationship. Some, like Min Ho, didn’t consider it a serious relationship. Min Ho thought Kitty was nothing more than Dae’s pen pal.
When Kitty comes to KISS, she keeps it a secret from Dae, which is shocking for him and her because she discovers that he is in a relationship with Yuri. His and Yuri’s relationship is publicized because she is the daughter of a rich businessman. So, everyone believes that they are together for real. This would mean that Dae never had a real relationship with Kitty, yet she came all the way from Portland to Korea for him. This makes her sound like a stalker and not some romantic person who moved halfway across the world for the person they love.
Because no one knows Kitty at KISS and they all know Yuri and Dae, they don’t bother to hear out Kitty and her version of events. They see her as a girl who once met Dae and then became so obsessed with him that she left her life in America to be with him, even though he already has a girlfriend. Of course, no one knows that Dae and Yuri’s relationship is fake.
In any case, Kitty doesn’t do herself any favors by crashing into the cupcakes during the welcome party. This feeds the narrative of her being an unhinged person. She also keeps trying to talk to Dae to clear things between them, and the others see it as an attempt to break Dae and Yuri’s relationship. Considering all this, they name her the Portland Stalker. And unfortunately for Kitty, no matter how hard she tries to shake it off, the nickname sticks.
Read More: Is XO Kitty’s KISS a Real School in Korea?
