Karate Kid: Legends May Have Revealed Its John Kreese Replacement, 2 Months After Cobra Kai’s Explosive Ending

Karate Kid: Legends is the next movie in a long line of films and TV shows within the Karate Kid franchise. But its story is seemingly going to mirror the plot of the franchise’s original movie, The Karate Kid, more than any other work since 1984. We already know that teenage martial arts student Li Fong’s journey in Karate Kid: Legends is a callback to Daniel LaRusso’s story in The Karate Kid, and the new movie may also have a replacement for the original movie’s principal villain, John Kreese.

This latest chapter in the Karate Kid story sees Chinese teenager Fong move to New York and switch from training in kung-fu to karate. He has a little help from Jackie Chan’s Mr. Miyagi replacement, Mr. Han, as well as Daniel LaRusso himself. However, Li has to contend with some adversaries, too, primarily in the shape of Karate Kid: Legends’ Johnny Lawrence replacement, Connor. Based on split-second snippets from the trailers that have been released for the movie so far, it’s very possible that Joshua Jackson will be playing a new version of Kreese, Lawrence’s sensei in The Karate Kid.

Joshua Jackson’s Victor Could Be Karate Kid: Legends’ John Kreese Replacement

As Daniel LaRusso actor Ralph Macchio alluded to in an interview with Entertainment Tonight during CinemaCon, we don’t know the specifics of Joshua Jack son’s Karate Kid: Legends

 character just yet. It’s only really been confirmed that the character is called Victor. Nevertheless, on the basis of brief clips of fight scenes involving Macchio and Chan, we can deduce that Jackson may well be playing a replacement for John Kreese, the sensei who runs the Cobra Kai dojo in the original 1984 movie The Karate Kid.

Karate Kid: Legends already has equivalent characters for Daniel LaRusso, Mr. Miyagi, Johnny Lawrence and Lucille LaRusso confirmed, so it only seems natural that John Kreese’s story is also revived for a new generation. The move to introduce a character similar to Kreese into the movie would be especially fitting following the explosive ending of Cobra Kai’s sixth and final season earlier this year, in which Kreese plays a prominent role.

Why Karate Kid: Legends Should Have Its Version Of John Kreese

With John Kreese having had something of a redemption arc at the end of Netflix’s Cobra Kai, before he died heroically in the penultimate episode of the show, it seems only right that Karate Kid: Legends should revive the character in a new form. Not only would this movie be the perfect time to introduce a replacement for Kreese in the Karate Kid franchise, but its plot is surely in need of this replacement to live up to the drama of the original 1984 film.

Even Johnny Lawrence, Daniel LaRusso’s main adversary for most of the movie, has some humanity to him, and ends up being a victim of Kreese’s punishing attitude to karate as much as Daniel’s tormentor.

In The Karate Kid, Kreese is the only all-out villain, who makes his own students in the Cobra Kai gang suffer in pursuit of victory by any means necessary, just as much as he enjoys watching their opponents suffer painful defeat. Even Johnny Lawrence, Daniel LaRusso’s main adversary for most of the movie, has some humanity to him, and ends up being a victim of Kreese’s punishing attitude to karate as much as Daniel’s tormentor. Yet, Kreese has no remorse, and lays into his own students before accepting any form of weakness or defeat.

John Kreese Is Still The Karate Kid Franchise’s Ultimate Villain

Regardless of John Kreese redeeming himself at the end of Cobra Kai, no other Karate Kid villain can compare to his role in the original movie and its sequels. Hardened by his experiences in the Vietnam War, which are revealed in Cobra Kai to have included killing his own army superior, Captain Turner, Kreese is merciless with his karate students. The traumatic effect that he had on them apparently lasted for decades after the events of the first Karate Kid, and even his belated apologies to Johnny Lawrence and Tory, among others, serve as too little, too late.

What’s more, no one brings out the sheer brilliance of Mr. Miyagi as a sensei and martial artist quite like John Kreese, who serves as the yin to Miyagi’s yang. It’s to be hoped that Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han and Daniel LaRusso get their moment to face down John Kreese’s replacement in a similar manner in Karate Kid: Legends, whether it’s Joshua Jackson’s Victor or another character in the new movie. No Karate Kid story is complete without a compelling villain of Kreese’s caliber.