🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

Kitty Song Covey’s first semester at KISS may be over, but XO, Kitty isn’t done testing the talented matchmaker or fans. 

The YA rom-com’s Season 1 finale raises several questions as it flies toward its conclusion: What’s next for Anna Cathcart’s Kitty after that big breakup? How will Kitty’s unexpected love hexagon actually shake out? But, as if those weren’t enough, Episode 10 poses yet one more as Kitty settles into her flight back to Portland, Oregon, in the last scene: Who the heck is Simon? 

Luckily for us, XO, Kitty star Cathcart has some answers. And she promises it’s a funny story. 

Toward the end of Episode 10, Kitty is expelled from KISS for living in the boys’ dorm all semester. As a consolation, principal Jina Lim (Yunjin Kim) — who was also Kitty’s mom Eve’s roommate in the ’90s — gives Kitty a keepsake: a letter that teen Eve wrote to Jina way back when. Regrettably, Jina never responded or even opened the envelope. 

In the closing moments of Season 1, Kitty reads the long-lost note as her homeward-bound flight takes off. “My world got so much bigger,” Eve wrote to Jina. “Because of you. And because of Simon.” 

Apparently, the letter didn’t always read “Simon.” Instead, the script simply said “Him,” Cathcart tells Tudum. But, on the day of filming, co-showrunner Sascha Rothchild made the decision to change the script. 

“She was like, ‘Let’s just put a name to him. It’s more fun. Let’s go with Simon,’ ” Cathcart says. “I was like, ‘Simon? Why Simon?’ She was like, ‘Why not Simon?’ ”

And so the enigma of Simon was born. While Eve’s mystery man didn’t always have a name, the XO, Kitty team planned to sow some questions about her KISS love life from the very beginning. “There was always going to be a guy,” says Cathcart. “There was always a guy in the letter and a guy in Eve’s life that Kitty was going to be curious about.” 

After all, the To All the Boys spin-off lays some breadcrumbs about Eve’s time at KISS long before the finale. In the series premiere, we see a flashback of Kitty sifting through her grandparents’ attic looking at Eve’s old belongings. In between Sweet Valley High novels and an old uniform, Kitty spies a photo of teenage Eve holding a boy’s arm next to a KISS cherry tree. Since his face is covered by leaves, all Kitty can say is, “Who’s this dude?” 

Maybe the guy is Simon. Or maybe he’s yet another piece in the puzzle of Eve’s life before she became Eve Song Covey. Either way, Cathcart is as curious as you are. “Kitty and Anna are equally interested in figuring this out,” she says. “So I’m right there with you.” 

Meet the Characters of ‘XO, Kitty’