Split into three parts, the final season of Netflix’s teen karate romp Cobra Kai has been, so far, all about its main and secondary characters making their way through a worldwide martial arts tournament known as the Sekai Taikai. The kids and senseis at the Miyagi-Do dojo have been defeating foe upon foe in the form of old rivals and new ones, each just a little bit more threatening than the previous one. Besides that, the core meaning of Miyagi-Do itself has come under threat, as sensei Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) has found some damning evidence about the past of his beloved master, Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita). And that’s not to mention the return of a feared nemesis, one so evil that even Kreese (Martin Kove) himself has reason to fear. But even with so much at stake, the members of the Miyagi-Do dojo still have reason to celebrate as old relationships are solidified through hard times and new ones are born. Despite the kidnappings, the betrayals, and that one pesky murder, Miyagi-Do is all about friendship, and nothing can truly get in the way of our heroes.
That’s all very heartwarming, isn’t it? However, do you see a problem in the previous paragraph? For a show called Cobra Kai, the Netflix series sure seems to be a lot about Miyagi-Do, right? The titular dojo that was once at the center of the show has been relegated to the role of the baddie, becoming something to be defeated by the good guys that have absolutely nothing to do with Cobra Kai. Well, or maybe they had something to do with it in the past, but now they have been fully converted to the Miyagi-Do methodology, with poor Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) relearning the same lesson over and over again about the importance of balance and whatnot. Heck, at this point in the series, following the revelation that Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) is 100% free, the Cobra Kai dojo isn’t even the greatest thing to be feared anymore. With Tory (Peyton List) defeated by Sam (Mary Mouser) in her final fight, the dojo isn’t even in the Sekai Taikai anymore. It has become completely irrelevant.
‘Cobra Kai’ Wasn’t Always About Miyagi-Do
This, of course, hasn’t always been the case. When Cobra Kai first started on YouTube Red, all the way back in 2018, Cobra Kai itself was right at the center of the show. Not only was the dojo extremely relevant to the plot, it was also the very school we were rooting for as we excitedly chanted “Cobra Kai! Cobra Kai! Cobra Kai!” while delighting ourselves with Daniel’s horror at the rise of a new karate king in the San Fernando Valley. Cobra Kai was home to a number of underdogs ranging from the All Valley Tournament’s most well remembered loser Johnny Lawrence to bullied newcomer Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña) to well-established nerds such as Eli (Jacob Bertrand) and Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo). Meanwhile, Daniel LaRusso was doing nothing but trying to crush these kids dreams of empowerment and self-defense. He was proving himself to be a pretty out-of-touch rich jerk, a far-cry from the boy we learned to love in 1984’s Karate Kid.
Beneath a somewhat simple veneer, Cobra Kai was also about something a lot more complex. It was about taking the horrors of your past and making something out of them. It was about resignifying something that paradoxically holds beauty and also a lot of trauma. You see, from the get-go, we were made to understand Johnny as far more than just a former bully who peaked in high school. Cobra Kai also introduced Johnny to us as a former abused child, not only in the context of his household, but also in the dojo that he held so dearly. Kreese really did a number on his brain, but that doesn’t mean that Johnny was incapable of having good memories of Cobra Kai. The dojo was also where he met his dearest friends, and the Season 2 episode in which Johnny reunites with them remains the show’s most touching this far. When Johnny brought back Cobra Kai, he was trying to relive his moment of glory, of course, but he was also trying to reform a place of both love and hurt.
Cobra Kai is all about taking the pretty much one-note characters from the classic 80s franchise and making them more complex. And, sure enough, a lot happened during the show’s run to prove that neither Johnny nor Daniel were as simple as the series initially made them out to be. Robby’s (Tanner Buchanan) introduction meant that we had to deal with a Johnny that was a horrible father and a Daniel that was pretty much okay with taking in his biggest rival’s only son. Subsequently, Kreese’s return saw Johnny robbed of the legacy that he was trying to build and forced to join forces with Daniel to preserve karate balance in the Valley. All of this eventually leads to Daniel and Johnny becoming co-senseis at Miyagi-Do, and that’s about where the problem begins.
‘Cobra Kai’ Should Be About Crowning New Heroes, Not Celebrating Old Ones
From that point on, we saw a certain shift in gear. From the very first episode of Cobra Kai, Johnny was shown to be a diamond in the rough, someone whose heart is in the right place, but who needs to learn a thing or two (or a hundred) from the people around him. And he did learn a lot from his students as well as from Carmen (Vanessa Rubio). Though his character is somewhat flanderized now as someone who is always saying the most cringeworthy things possible, there’s no denying that Johnny has evolved. But when the show started being about him learning from Daniel, well, that’s where things got weird. Of course, there are a couple of episodes that show that Daniel’s method might not always be the best one, but, more often than not, it is Johnny that needs to become more Miyagi-Do in a clear celebration of Mr. Miyagi’s legacy. But the kick is that Cobra Kai was never meant to be a celebration of Mr. Miyagi’s legacy. It was not meant as a song about the glories of old heroes, but as a coronation of new ones.
To some extent, Cobra Kai still does just that. After all, the show is introducing us to a new generation of karate royalty. But this coronation was also supposed to be Johnny’s. When the show started, its focus was on presenting us with a broken man making something for himself out of the wreckage of his childhood, and that is honestly quite beautiful. Now, with Cobra Kai under Kreese’s control and all but gone from the plot, and even its replacement dojo, Eagle Fang, completely erased, Johnny’s attempt at building a legacy is pretty much kaput. The best he has going for him is being a competent teacher at another man’s dojo. In a sense, that feels like a bastardization of what Cobra Kai once promised its viewers.
To make things even weirder, Cobra Kai went from being a mere name that could hide either a teen militia or a man’s dreams of creating something good to being some sort of ancient evil that Johnny helped unleash back on the Valley. It’s almost as if his character is doing time in Miyagi-Do for bring forth something so horrible, a force that must be stopped at all costs. Once again, this defeats the show’s original premise of “what’s in a name”. Originally, Daniel was painted as being the villain for not accepting that something that bore only such a small resemblance to t he thing that did him harm when he was a teen could change and become a place for good. Now, it’s as if he has been vindicated. He was right all along, and Johnny should never have tried to revive Cobra Kai.
Cobra Kai Needs to Make a Comeback at the End of the Series
To add insult to injury, following all that, the writers of Cobra Kai also decided to kick the titular dojo to the curb in the Sekai Taikai. So now we are supposed to cheer because the thing our protagonist helped created is no longer relevant at all. This feels wrong. Actually, scratch that: it feels sad. Johnny should have the chance to take back the thing he helped build and that the show so quickly decided he didn’t need anymore. Johnny should have the chance to bring back Cobra Kai, to take it from Kreese’s hand and remake it in his own image. In other words, Cobra Kai should have a shot at a comeback. It should end the series it helped name on top of its game, instead of being relegated to oblivion.
There are many ways to do that, ways that don’t have to involve a horrible man such as Kreese coming up on top at all. There’s the perfect solution that would reinstate the entire series back to its original premise. With Johnny running Cobra Kai once again, we would go back to having that abused kid rebuilding the pieces of his childhood one by one. However, even if the writers don’t want to put Johnny back on Cobra Kai — which, in our opinion, would be a mistake — they could also have someone else take over the dojo, driving home the point that it is not a bizarre force of evil, but something much more complex that brought pain and joy to its students. You know, they could have someone like, say, Tory taking over the place and giving her life new meaning in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Sure, she’s out of the Sekai Taikai for now, but who’s to say something won’t happen to allow her back in as a Cobra Kai competitor?
Cobra Kai seems to be in the perfect spot for that. The show is at a crossroads with Daniel finding out that Mr. Miyagi killed a man in the Sekai Taikai back in his day. The writers could either find a loophole to invalidate this death as something meaningful, or they could roll with it, using it as proof that Miyagi-Do isn’t the pure karate method Daniel made it out to be. And, if that’s the case, there is no inherently good or evil karate, and, thus, there is no reason why Cobra Kai cannot exist. But even if they choose to keep Mr. Miyagi’s legacy clean, it’s about time they allow Cobra Kai to be its own thing again. It is time to allow the dojo to land on top while also defeating those that pervert their power over their students.
