Final Showdown: Cobra Kai’s Future—End It or Extend It?

“That’s the catchphrase for the hit Netflix show. But as the Karate Kid continuation reaches its sixth and final season, I, a fan from its YouTube Red days, started to question whether maybe it should stop.

As the series has continued, the plots have gotten more predictable and repetitious. How many times can William Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence and Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso square off? With his signature grimace and cigar in hand, how many more times can Martin Kove’s Kreese make an appearance? Can the youthful protagonists face the dilemma of becoming Eagle Fang, Miyagi-Do, or a hybrid of the two identities several times? How many lengthy combat scenes are too many?

Cobra Kai, however, follows in the footsteps of the series’ underlying underdog narrative by overcoming adversity and ultimately succeeding. By the end of the five episodes that debut as part of this first tranche of the sixth season, the series offers one heck of a cliffhanger.

Episode 1 of the new season is “Peacetime in the Valley.” “That is the sweet, sweet sound of no more karate wars,” Daniel tells his wife Amanda (Courtney Henggeler) at the beginning of the episode. Thomas Ian Griffith’s character Terry Silver was imprisoned during the previous season, but Martin Kove’s character Kreese managed to escape and is currently a wanted man. Of course, no more karate battles would mean no more spectacle; tranquility in the valley cannot continue for long.

This season focused on the youngsters practicing for the Sekai Taikai, the world championship karate tournament that “for over a century” has been happening every two years. “This is the Olympics plus the Gladiator Games plus the Kumite from Bloodsport, all rolled into one,” Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) explains. Cobra Kai handles the Sekai Taikai with such solemnity that, for a minute, I questioned whether it’s a legitimate competition. Spoiler alert: it’s not. But it’s a terrific mechanism to take the karate competition worldwide and elevate the event beyond the All-Valley Karate Tournament.

The series’ constant hidden weapon has always been its sense of comedy, and Season 6 offers plenty. Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) wanders about the LaRusso home in a robe and eats all the cannolis, while Amanda explains, “Guy flies in for the weekend to kill Terry Silver and stays for another three months.

That’s natural, right?” Paul Walter Hauser, whose career has grown since the program’s initial appearance with parts in Inside Out 2 and Black Bird, delightfully reprises his role as karate wannabe Raymond. According to Johnny, the world gives the program its strongest punch. His ideas of what makes an adolescent girl’s slumber party, how to negotiate his new work, or how simple the approaching delivery of his kid will be (“I’m a pro with boys, and girls are easy,” he says Daniel) are highlights. The program exhibits a continual, cheeky self-awareness and willingness to be in on the joke.

Cobra Kai also stays charmingly rooted in its ‘80s cultural origins, from the excellent hair band music to the famous phrase shoutouts (at one point Daniel states that he is “too old for this shit,” a la Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon), to essentially all things Johnny. He still regards the Soviet Union (which no longer exists) as their number one foreign opponent, and he teaches his pupils by having them watch martial arts movies like Best of the Best. His political incorrectness is intact.

“Chicks dig me,” he tells Daniel. “Don’t be a pussycat” is still one of his favorite retorts. Although Zabka should terminate Johnny in 2024, he manages to keep him blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings. Zabka skillfully inverted the narrative of his young villain to create a figure that is humorous but never a caricature.

One thing the series can’t beat is the passage of time. It’s been over two years since the sitcom aired its fifth season. But it’s just been a few months in the Cobra Kai chronology, and maybe a year has gone since the program was initially broadcast. That’s a bit of an issue considering a lot of the young actors seem so much older than when the program initially started.

This last season finds them in their senior year of high school, applying to universities, and fretting about academics and extracurricular activities. They should be concerned about their transcripts since it doesn’t seem like they’ve been attending school all that much—and I’m not so sure how much Stanford cares about karate.

Unfortunately, the program remains devoted to presenting more of Kreese’s background, which it started diving into in the show’s third season. Of all the arcs, Kreese’s looks the most superfluous. The episode has previously addressed why Kreese is such a horrible character. And while the series spins its wheels on its adversary, this season also sees Daniel delve deeper into Mr. Miyagi’s (the late Pat Morita’s) history. While it’s pleasing how the program continues to commemorate Morita, this new narrative twist does feel a bit like Cobra Kai fumbling for stories.

The actors portraying the show’s adolescent protagonists are all terrific, but Peyton List’s Tory becomes the show’s MVP in this first arc of episodes. Like Zabka, List has twisted the bad-girl archetype on its head and soared beyond the tropes.

Her tale has greater dramatic thrust this season, and List is more than up for the task. To their credit, showrunners and writers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg typically upend our assumptions and don’t send their characters down a predictable route.

Would the series sweep the leg on our assumptions of how Cobra Kai would end? We won’t get that answer for a long time, as Netflix is drawing out Cobra Kai’s farewell and showing no compassion to viewers who are keen to know how the program finishes off. The next set of episodes will premiere on November 15th of this year, with the last episodes debuting on a currently unplanned date in 2025.