Margot Song Covey

Margot Song Covey is the eldest of the Covey sisters, a student away at school in Scotland, and Josh’s former girlfriend. Her place in the family is felt both when she is present—as a confidante and an irreplaceable part of the household—and when she is absent. Her breakup with Josh gives the sisters’ separation a painful emotional counterpart, while her advice to Lara Jean shows how closely their experiences of love remain connected.

Identity and Family Life

Margot is part of a family that carries Korean traditions into ordinary life. For New Year’s Day, she wears a hanbok bought by Grandma during a visit to Korea: a yellow jacket paired with an apple-green skirt. She joins the family’s bowing ritual, in which relatives greet their elders and receive money in return. The custom places each family member within a visible order, from Grandma down to Kitty, while the ceremony also makes the mother’s absence newly apparent. Margot belongs to this shared inheritance even as the sisters negotiate how its practices fit their lives.

The family’s connection to Korea also appears through food and the memory of their mother. At dinner, Daddy recalls taking Margot’s mother to a Korean restaurant on their first date, where she ordered in Korean and explained the dishes to him. He regrets that the girls did not continue Korean school. The recollection gives Margot’s family history a particular shape: cultural knowledge is remembered not as an abstraction, but through a meal, a first date, and a father’s wish that his daughters had kept learning. At another family dinner, Kitty wonders which sauce their mother liked with roast chicken. Lara Jean cannot remember, and the question makes clear how even small household preferences can become uncertain after a loss. Margot’s absence from that dinner is marked by the place her chutney would have occupied among the condiments.

Leaving Home and the Sisters’ Bond

When Margot and Daddy leave for the airport, the sisters embrace fiercely. Margot tells Lara Jean to be strong, and Lara Jean nods as Margot and Daddy depart. The farewell is both intimate and practical: Margot is leaving for school, but the household must also continue without her. Afterward, Lara Jean makes banana pancakes for herself and Kitty, takes on chores, and contacts Belleview about the job that Margot’s replacement had left vacant. Her departure therefore changes not only the emotional texture of the home but also the distribution of work within it.

The sisters’ closeness persists across that distance. When Margot later appears upset, Lara Jean makes her Night-Night tea with honey, recalling how their mother used to prepare it, and brings her buttered cinnamon toast. Kitty is meant to offer comfort too, but Margot is crying by the time Lara Jean reaches her room. Lara Jean curls beside her, presses her forehead to Margot’s back, and scratches her shoulder blades as she likes. Because Margot almost never cries, the sight unsettles Lara Jean’s sense of home; her sister’s grief seems to tilt the whole household. Their comfort is not a solution so much as a familiar form of care: Lara Jean stays physically close while Margot tries to say what has ended.

Josh and the End of the Relationship

Margot tells Lara Jean that it is truly over with Josh. She had thought that if she wanted to get back together, he would want the same, but he believes a long-distance relationship is too hard and that she was right to break up in the first place. Margot feels that she missed him more than he missed her. Lara Jean feels partly responsible because she encouraged Margot to speak with him, and tries to correct that painful impression with what she had seen: during French class, Josh sat alone on the bleachers eating lunch. Margot asks whether he really missed her, and Lara Jean’s account offers evidence of his loneliness without changing the outcome of their conversation.

Even in the immediate aftermath, Margot can hold on to the value of what the relationship was. When Lara Jean asks whether she regrets it, Margot says she thinks she will always be glad it was Josh, whatever happened afterward. Her answer separates the end of the romance from its worth: the breakup does not erase the love she experienced. That night Lara Jean sleeps in Margot’s cold room above the garage, as they did in earlier times, listening to the heat click on and off. In the dark, Margot jokes about dating Scottish men when she returns to school; Lara Jean turns the idea into a playful tour of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Humor lets them imagine a future beyond the breakup without requiring Margot to deny her sadness.

Advice, Memory, and Influence

Margot remains a source of practical counsel for Lara Jean. When Lara Jean is uncertain about giving Peter a letter, Margot picks it up from her coat and urges her to talk to him directly, suggesting that Daddy drive her to Peter’s house. The advice is characteristically straightforward: rather than letting the letter remain an unresolved possibility, Lara Jean should deliver it and hear Peter’s response. Her role as older sister thus extends beyond the family home; she helps Lara Jean act when hesitation threatens to keep her stuck.

Margot’s relationship with Josh also shapes Lara Jean’s ideas about dating. At Starbucks, Lara Jean imagines a more casual, old-fashioned courtship, where people might go on dates without becoming one another’s exclusive partner immediately. She recalls that Margot wishes she had not let things grow so serious with Josh, and uses that experience to explain her hope that a breakup need not make former partners unable to share a room. Margot’s history becomes a caution and a possibility for her younger sister: intimacy can become painful, but a relationship’s end need not destroy every other connection.

Narrative Significance

Margot’s story is defined by changes that do not cancel one another out. She leaves home for school, loses the possibility of reconciling with Josh, and still regards having loved him as something she is glad to have done. Her departure leaves Lara Jean and Kitty to manage more of family life, but her influence continues through remembered rituals, shared habits, and advice carried across distance. She is especially important as a counterpoint to Lara Jean’s fears about love: Margot’s experience shows both the ache of a relationship ending and the possibility of remembering it without regret.

The sisters’ affection also helps connect the family’s present to its absent mother. A cup of tea made as their mother once made it, a New Year’s ritual, and Daddy’s memory of a Korean restaurant all give family history a place in the routines Margot shares with her sisters. She is not simply the absent eldest child or the unhappy former girlfriend. She remains a participant in the family’s continuing life, even when school and heartbreak have taken her away from home.