“Balance is key,” says Mr. Miyagi in the original “Karate Kid,” and it’s an ethos that Netflix (and formerly YouTube Red)’s long-running cult continuation “Cobra Kai” has long struggled to achieve. The fact that a show like this—sprung from a scrappy but novel idea from creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg to flip the legacyquel trend on its head—has managed six entire seasons of television, in a streaming era where most show struggle to get three, is like catching a fly with chopsticks: a borderline miracle. But “Cobra Kai”‘s cult success has also been its grandest challenge, struggling to wring intrigue, drama, and (most importantly) high-kicking karate action out of the simple brief of “what if the bully from an ’80s movie got the chance to make good?”
Granted, over the course of the show’s run, “Cobra Kai” has evolved past its brief as a grounded followup to an ’80s cheeseball classic into more unironically embracing the corniness of such a karate-focused universe. And Netflix, in its infinite wisdom, split its final super-sized season into three five-episode chunks; its final five installments are classic “Cobra Kai”—melodramatic, cheesier than a charcuterie board, and deeply affectionate towards its sprawling dojo of misfits.
Part 3’s grandest challenge comes from following up the action-packed stakes of Part 2, in which the Miyagi-Do clan found themselves in a balls-to-the-wall karate melee at the Barcelona-set Sekai Taikai (ending in the accidental death of Cobra Kai wunderkind Kwon at his own hand). Sobered and humiliated, the tournament is canceled and everyone heads back to the Valley to lick their wounds. Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) turns away from karate altogether; Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) feels even more rudderless while he helps prepare for fatherhood; the nearly dozen main kids we follow all juggle their own questions about what their post-karate lives will look like.
But a last-chance offer from series villain Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) leads to a wary alliance, and a potential chance to reclaim glory: Use what’s left of his dwindling fortunes to restart the Sekai Taikai, this time in the Valley, and see which of the three ranking dojos (Miyagi-Do, Cobra Kai, and Silver’s own Iron Dragons) will reign supreme. It’s one last chance for our characters to recapture a flash of glory, and send this series off with a bang.
It’s overstuffed and melodramatic, in keeping with the state of “Cobra Kai” past, I don’t know, its third season? Look back at the show’s humble beginnings, where the focus was purely on Johnny as the beleaguered underdog, and you’d hardly believe that he’d not only join forces with his nemesis, but that virtually every day player from the “Karate Kid” movies would come back to kick some septuagenarian ass alongside a crop of ambitious young actors looking to make their name. (To my great lament, I must inform you that Hilary Swank does NOT make an appearance.) Still, Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg try their level best to give the show’s expanded bench its due, even if a lot of character arcs get lost in the shuffle.
That bloat, and the repetitiveness therein, remains one of “Cobra Kai”‘s glaring weaknesses; every season, there’s love triangles, a new karate tournament, ever-shifting allegiances between friend and foe, and (most tediously) expansion of previous “Karate Kid” lore. That last part is perhaps the show’s most tiresome trick at this point, particularly as Danny wrestles with some tragic wrinkles in the late Mr. Miyagi’s past. (It’s also hard to forgive one particularly egregious sequence that makes use of an AI-deepfaked Pat Morita to haunt Danny in his dreams.) Even for a legacy sequel, there’s a feeling we’ve seen so much of this before, remixed in various permutations among old and new characters over six seasons.
That said, “Cobra Kai” diehards can find more than a little comfort in the extended goodbyes this final stretch of episodes give us. All of these kids started out as dorks or nemeses (or both) in their opening episodes; it’s hard not to feel a little pride at how they’ve grown both as characters and performers. (Xolo Maridueña even got to star in a DC movie, even if it got tragically buried.) Whether it’s the ever-shifting romantic entanglements of Miguel, Robby (Tanner Buchanan), Sam (Mary Mouser) and Tory (Peyton List), or the fractured friendship of “Binary Bros” Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) and “Hawk” (Jacob Bertrand), it’s nice to see them get satisfying, if cloyingly optimistic, endings to their stories. (Bear in mind there’s a host of other main characters here I can’t find space for in this review, a testament to how full-to-bursting the cast list has become over the show’s lifetime.)
The series also leans even more headlong into its ’80s pastiche, from the needledrops of “You’re the Best Around” to a “Real Genius”-ass subplot where the nerds make a virtual algorithm trainer for Robby to test his mettle before a fight. (There’s even a climactic fistfight on an exploding yacht, as if the showrunners felt they just needed to toss a little “Miami Vice” in the gumbo.) The fights are still staged with confidence, though the older actors are finally really starting to show their wear, especially in moments where the elderly Griffith and Kreese (Martin Kove) square off.
Fortunately, “Cobra Kai” spends its final hour zeroing back in on the character that started this redemptive journey: Johnny Lawrence. Zabka has long been the lifeblood of this show, carrying a kind of laconic, man-out-of-time machismo that’s led to the show’s funniest gags and most cathartic moments. This whole thing crane-kicked off because his defeat in the first “Karate Kid” led him down a spiral of self-defeating stasis; amid all the fist-flying soap opera, it’s a relief that the writers remembered that, end of the day, “Cobra Kai” is Johnny’s journey to complete. (The show’s climax offers every guy who peaked in high school the chance they’ve waited for: To take another shot at their greatest failure and win this time. That it happens against action superstar Lewis Tan is just the icing on the cake.)
“Cobra Kai”‘s Netflix era has been about the dissonance in disciplines between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai: defense versus offense, mercy verses no-mercy, sensitivity over aggression. It’s that same balance that the show itself teetered against from the get-go, and has frequently failed to strike. But it’s also a show about recovering from failure, and not letting your mistakes define you; as long as you give it one last shot, and land the right blow at the right time, that’s all people remember. As bone-shakingly sincere as the show became after its cynical origins, “Cobra Kai” landed on that final corny note, and (only just) stuck the landing.
All five episodes screened for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.
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