Cobra Kai has no right being as good as it is. A continuation of The Karate Kid franchise, the show revisits the rivalry between Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence thirty years later, and somehow transforms a premise that screams “cash grab” into a genuinely entertaining, emotionally resonant series that respects its source material while finding new stories worth telling.
William Zabka returns as Johnny Lawrence, the original film’s antagonist, now a washed-up alcoholic living in the shadow of his past failures. Ralph Macchio is back as Daniel LaRusso, now a successful car dealer who still carries Mr. Miyagi’s lessons but has lost sight of some of their meaning. The show originally launched on YouTube Red in 2018 before moving to Netflix, where it ran for six seasons and found the massive audience its charm deserved.
William Zabka’s Second Act
The show’s masterstroke is making Johnny Lawrence its protagonist. Zabka, who was indelibly branded as the Karate Kid bully in 1984, gets to play a version of Johnny that’s both a product of that characterization and a rebuttal to it. His Johnny is out of touch, politically incorrect, and stubbornly stuck in the 1980s, but he’s also fundamentally decent, deeply lonely, and trying to be better with tools nobody ever taught him how to use. Zabka plays this with a comic timing and emotional vulnerability that makes Johnny not just sympathetic but the most engaging character on the show.
The mentor-student dynamic between Johnny and his new student Miguel, played by Xolo Mariduena, gives the show its emotional core. Johnny’s attempt to teach karate while working through his own damage creates a throughline that the show handles with surprising sincerity. The relationship is funny, touching, and the primary engine of Johnny’s growth as a character.
The show’s ability to recontextualize the original films is clever and consistent. By showing events from Johnny’s perspective and filling in the decades between then and now, Cobra Kai argues that the original story was more complicated than hero versus villain. This revisionist perspective never betrays the original films but enriches them, making rewatches of The Karate Kid more interesting rather than less.
The young cast brings fresh energy and strong physical commitment to the martial arts. The show stages its teen rivalries with a combination of earnest emotion and self-aware comedy that prevents them from feeling too silly, and the training and tournament sequences are choreographed with more care than the genre typically demands.
Repetition as a Fighting Style
Cobra Kai’s biggest weakness is its reliance on cyclical plotting. The show follows a predictable pattern: alliances shift, rivalries intensify, a tournament or confrontation provides a seasonal climax, and then the pieces reset for the next cycle. By the later seasons, this repetition becomes noticeable, with characters switching dojos, making up, and falling out again in patterns that start to feel mechanical.
The expanding cast creates problems as the show progresses. New teen characters are introduced each season, diluting the focus and creating rivalry dynamics that echo the original without matching its emotional stakes. The show can’t resist adding characters when it should be deepening existing ones, and by the final seasons, the ensemble is too large for any single storyline to get adequate development.
The adult storylines become less compelling as the show runs longer. Daniel and Johnny’s rivalry, which powers the first two seasons beautifully, loses its edge through repetition. Their cycle of grudging alliance, misunderstanding, and conflict repeats enough times that the pattern becomes predictable rather than dramatic. The introduction of returning villains from the original franchise injects temporary energy but follows the same diminishing-returns logic.
The final season’s expanded format and international setting represent a significant departure from the show’s strengths. Cobra Kai works best as a small-scale character comedy about people in a specific community, and the larger stakes of the later seasons don’t always suit the show’s intimate sensibility.
The Power of Trying Again
Cobra Kai’s core theme is redemption through effort. Johnny, Daniel, and their students are all trying to overcome past failures, and the show treats that effort with genuine respect even when the results are imperfect. The karate serves as a metaphor for personal growth that the show takes seriously without taking itself too seriously.
Should You Watch Cobra Kai?
If you have any affection for The Karate Kid or enjoy character-driven comedy-dramas with strong action, Cobra Kai is a delight, particularly in its first three seasons. Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence is one of the best character reinventions in recent television, and the show’s balance of nostalgia and fresh storytelling is expertly calibrated. Skip it if repetitive plotting frustrates you or if the later seasons’ declining returns on a proven formula sound exhausting.
The Verdict on Cobra Kai
Cobra Kai is a crowd-pleaser that earns its crowd, at least for the majority of its run. Zabka’s revelatory performance as Johnny Lawrence anchors a show that treats its source material with affection and its audience with respect. The later seasons can’t match the early seasons’ freshness, and the cyclical plotting becomes a genuine weakness, but the show’s warmth and humor carry it through its weaker stretches. It’s proof that nostalgia-driven entertainment can have a heart.