For all the brand-new chaos Kitty brings to KISS in the sophomore season of Netflix’s XO, Kitty, things ended in a more mellow way compared to the finale of Season 1. Showrunner Jessica O’Toole, who also worked with Jenny Han on Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty, chalked it up to timing.

Season 2 of the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before spinoff series watched Anna Catchcart’s main character and youngest Song Covey sister return to the Korean International School fo Seoul to finish out her year studying abroad there and to track down the mysterious Simon mentioned in her mother’s letter. Of course, the love triange dynamics came back with a force this season as well because, despite her best efforts, Kitty still had feelings for Yuri (Gia Kim) and Min Ho’s heart-on-his-sleeve confession to her at the end of Season 1 is in the back of her mind too.

Try as she might to get over Yuri by following her older sister Lara Jean’s (Lana Condor) advice and writing a letter to get all her feelings out, Kitty’s letter was exposed to their whole friend group and dragging Kitty and Yuri’s kiss into the open, leading Julianna and Yuri to break up.

“I just wanted to honor what would feel like would really happen, and not just think of the characters as puzzle pieces or pieces of a plot, because I never think of characters that way,” O’Toole told Deadline. “[Kitty and Yuri] started off in such a — with everything that happened at the end of Season 1 — Yuri was in a real relationship with Juliana. I wanted to respect that. I didn’t want it to be parts of a love triangle and how we dealt with that. I really felt like they were real. I did feel like even Kitty knew when she kissed Yuri, “this isn’t gonna go [well],” because there was a betrayal, and then lying, and she had started to get to know Juliana. Juliana doesn’t deserve that.”

This left Yuri, Kitty and Julianna adrift for a bit, but also locked in a tension of sorts because Kitty and Julianna lived together and Yuri still wanted to be friends with Kitty.

“It didn’t feel like really it could work out because it started out wrong, similar to the Min Ho confessing his love right after [Kitty and Dae broke up],” O’Toole continued. “That’s the whole thing about timing, when you’re in relationships, it does matter, and when you’re that age, you’re often doing things at the wrong time.”

O’Toole couldn’t say too much about the significance of those To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before callbacks taking place mostly with Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee’), but she did acknowledge the excitement around that possible match for Kitty. Sang Heon Lee’s playboy and Dae’s (Minyeong Choi) best friend wanted nothing to do with Kitty at the beginning of Season 1 before falling head over heels for her.

“I can’t be spoilering things, but Kitty is on a journey of how she identifies and exploring her feelings for Yuri, for Min Ho, her past with Dae, all of that stuff. Obviously Min Ho’s the character that everyone’s excited about and that they have had this very interesting journey together, which is very enemies to lovers and all the K-drama tropes that are so fun to play with,” she said. “But also their chemistry together is wonderful, and it feels very real. What I love about what we do with them this season is how we see their friendship. You see him accept her at face value that she’s not in the same place, and you see him handle that in a really mature way where they can be friends, and that’s what was most fun about it for me.”

Both Cathcart and Lee commented on their characters’ final scene together, one that strikes a precarious balance of hope and leaving the audience wanting more for their potential love story. Cathcart had fun with all of the hints and longing stares she shared with Lee, who felt it was a good ending for them in that moment.

“Whatever happened on that last moment between Kitty and Min Ho was probably the best output because they both just talked about what they’re going through and what they might be doing,” he told Deadline. “So maybe, it’s a good thing that they’re not rushing into things. A kiss really is quite a bit of a rush, so maybe slow it down a little bit.”

Min Ho also helped Kitty reconnect her grandmother (who is portrayed by Jenny Han’s mom Ae Yon Han) and her grandmother’s sister Soon Ja (Hye Sun Jung) through letters from her mom to the mystery man Simon, who turned out to be Eve’s cousin. In an act of true love, he loaned her his private jet to fly Kitty’s eldest sister Margot (Janel Parrish) and Kitty’s Halmoni to Bukjeon to reunite with her older sister after their decades-old feud.

“We were all crying, and they were really crying. Jenny’s mom was amazing. It was like a real moment for all of us on set watch this, and for Anna and Janel. I love that story and I think there’s, there’s endless places you can go with that. I mean, she can’t keep finding secret relatives,” O’Toole said. “But I am a sucker for family secrets. I also think it’s really interesting that we are living in this time where you can’t really have family secrets anymore, necessarily because everything’s online. The idea that these people who [had] one of those conflicts that didn’t need to get as big as it was, a misunderstanding, and then, just because it was a long time ago, and they went their separate ways, and they didn’t have Facebook, they completely lost touch with each other. And I love how it reflects the theme of sisterhood that that has been in the franchise from the beginning.”

As for Season 3 hopes, O’Toole sees a lot of possibilities with the show’s growing ensemble and the coming-of-age aspect of the YA K-drama.

“I’d be thrilled to keep going with these characters and the world. I have been thinking mostly of more what we can see in Korea still. There’s a whole bunch more to Korea than just Seoul,” she said. “And we’ve got all these characters who have families. I do love the idea with however many seasons — knocking on things — that we’re lucky enough to get, of expanding the world and going in more depth with the characters maturing. That’s what’s so great about coming of age shows is that the show gets to grow up along with the characters.”