No Surrender Cinema: Cobra Kai (Season 3)
SPOILER WARNING: This edition of No Surrender Cinema covers Cobra Kai Season 3 in full, so if you haven’t seen all ten episodes yet, skip it for now and come back once you have!
Relationships, reunions, and revenge; those are the three r’s to pay attention to when spending your time watching Cobra Kai Season 3. After enduing a year that had not been kind to us, Netflix decided to throw us a bone and decided to drop all ten episodes of the third season (and the first season to be exclusive to their platform) on New Year’s Day. Yours truly spent his first hours of the new year indulging in a marathon binge of the popular Karate Kid continuation, so join me in this special edition of No Surrender Cinema as I break down everything that went down between the dueling dojos in all ten episodes of the new season!
It’s felt like forever since Miguel went careening over the second floor railing in the Cobra Kai Season 2 finale. What’s been almost 2 years in real time (and probably felt even longer to many of us; thanks 2020) has only been 2 weeks in Cobra Kai time. Even in that short 14 day span, Johnny Lawrence has regressed back into a drunken sad sack, Daniel LaRusso’s auto dealership is facing hard times, and John Kreese has continued to impose his will on Hawk, Tory, and the other students who disavowed Johnny in the aftermath of the epic school fight that closed out the last season. Things aren’t any easier for the kids, either, because Miguel has yet to awaken from his coma and might be paralyzed, Sam is dealing with some serious panic attacks, and Robby has gone full blown fugitive, desperate to escape the repercussions of his ill-timed kick that put Miguel in the hospital and made him Public Enemy #1.
It doesn’t take long for all of these individual threads to start getting tied together; Episode 2 sees Daniel and Johnny become full blown buddy cops (well, almost, since Daniel’s wife Amanda has to remind them that they are in fact not cops), combining forces to try and track Robby down. Their efforts wind up putting them on the wrong side of a local chop shop, but the ensuing battle proves to be a bit cathartic for Johnny, who has been drowning in guilt because of what happened to Miguel. When Robby is eventually found, Johnny and Daniel agree that turning himself in is the best move, which puts Robby at odds with both his father and father figure. Robby does his time in juvie, where he becomes the target of the resident bully, and it’s Kreese of all people who shows up for a visit and reminds the boy about the importance of striking first.
The rivalry between the dojos presses on, even after Miguel awakens and begins his recovery with Johnny’s enthusiastic and often times eccentric support. His recovery pleases his buddy Hawk and his old flame Sam, but their respective camps remain at odds. With the high school now adhering to an incredibly strict zero tolerance rule and “safe space” rules pushed by a new counselor, the members of Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai trade more verbal jabs than real ones. Making things more tense is Kreese’s recruitment of new Cobra Kai students, which includes the returning Kyler. Determined to be Kreese’s alpha male, Hawk takes NO MERCY to the next level by beating another prospect to a bloody pulp in front of Kreese, then breaking his former best friend Dimitri’s arm when the Cobra Kai kids and Miyagi-Do students have a showdown in an abandoned laser tag room.
It’s not only the kids who are having a go of it; even the adults have a lot on their plate. Johnny’s main focus is to help Miguel heal, but he realizes that medical bills don’t come cheap, and seeks out ways to help pay for them. Daniel is offered a buyout by the rival dealership, and decides to venture to Japan to win over one of the manufacturers and secure a deal with them. It’s while he’s on this business trip that he decides to return to Okinawa and finds that things are not as he remembers them, but it leads to a chance encounter with Kumiko, the love interest from Karate Kid Part II. Kumiko presents Daniel with love letters that Mr. Miyagi had written to her aunt, which resonate with Daniel and his intentions to follow the path that Miyagi always tried to guide him on. Surprisingly enough, it’s Daniel’s enemy Chozen, contacted by Kumiko, who proves to be an asset to Daniel and his methods. The begrudging respect that Chozen holds for Daniel and their scenes together were pure joy, and I wished we had more Chozen. If a Johnny/Daniel buddy cop adventure can happen in this universe, I’m all for making the case that there should be a Daniel/Chozen one too!
Unfortunately for all of us, Chozen did not return to California with Daniel, but another character from Karate Kid history did show up; none other than the lovely Ali. After ending Season 2 by showing that she friend requested Johnny on Facebook, the two wind up connecting (once Miguel reveals to Johnny that you can also check Facebook on a computer), and Johnny’s interest in impressing her leads to some comical adventures with Miguel in tow. Johnny’s pining for Ali conflicts with his attraction to Carmen, and it just so happens that Ali reveals that she’s in town and invites him to lunch on the morning after he’s slept with Carmen for the first time. Johnny reconnects with Ali and downplays his normal bravado, opening up to her about his failures and his status in life. Ali confides that her life isn’t as perfect as her Facebook profile would lead one to believe; she’s separated from her husband and her kids are with him for the holidays. The two wind up spending the day together at Golf N’ Stuff, finally able to forget about the world around them for a few hours, but their perfect day stops just short of a kiss. Ali seems to enjoy having Johnny around her, and she invites him to a Christmas party that night, one that happens to be attended by Daniel and Amanda. While the four adults wine, dine, and listen to Ali wax nostalgic about how Johnny and Daniel were as boyfriends, the LaRusso home is the setting for this season’s mega-brawl, where the newly united Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang (Johnny’s new dojo name) kids are attacked by Cobra Kai. Though it pales in comparison to the school fight from last season, the home invasion serves to strengthen the bond between our heroes, as they rally to defeat Cobra Kai in a showdown that sees Kyler vanquished by Miguel once again, Sam standing up to Tory once and for all, and Hawk making the save for Dimitri with a babyface turn that any major wrestling promoter would be proud of. Good finally triumphs over evil and we get our happy ending…or so we think…because while the kids have run their bullies off, Daniel and Johnny seem to be getting along, and Ali inspires Johnny to look forward, not back, we’re not done yet.
When Johnny goes home to confess his true feelings to Carmen, he’s met with a bruised Miguel instead. Johnny charges into the Cobra Kai dojo to confront Kreese, and is met with his former mentor and his son, who is now officially under Kreese’s tutelage. Teacher and student finally face off in a battle that’s been building since the opening scene of The Karate Kid, Part II, and it’s so great that you almost forget that most of the heavy lifting is being done by stunt doubles. When Johnny is caught off guard by his bastard son and nearly finished off by Kreese, it’s Daniel who shows up to make the save, and now it’s his turn to get some shots in. Daniel gets a chance to show off some of the secrets taught to him by Chozen earlier in the season, but Sam and Miguel show up to prevent him from going too far. With Robby now devoted to Kreese and Daniel and Johnny going full speed ahead into their Marvel Team-Up, the stage is set for season 4 and the next All Valley Karate Tournament. Of course, it wouldn’t be Cobra Kai if we didn’t get a nice little tease of what to expect next season, and what a tease it was…
During Season 3, we were treated to Kreese’s backstory, showing him as a bullied busboy who finally fought back, fell in love, and enlisted in the Army. He was portrayed as a humble, yet dedicated soldier, but a failed mission led to his unit becoming prisoners of war. We find out that Kreese’s girlfriend died while he was deployed, but his commanding officer never told him as to not take his focus off of their orders. When the Vietnamese soldiers force the Americans to fight to the death, Kreese offers to go in place of one of the other men in his unit, and winds up killing his commanding officer by dropping him into a snake pit. Not only do we see why no mercy has become a creed for him to live by, but we also see that the man whose place he took in that fight, one who shows his gratitude by promising John Kreese anything he ever needs, anywhere, anytime, is none other than Terry Silver!
I really enjoyed Cobra Kai season 3, even though it felt like it moved at a slower pace than the prior two seasons. The third installment put a lot of focus on character development, giving both the adult cast and the main kids a chance to shine. The appearances by Chozen, Kumiko, and Ali were very well done and served to move the story along while also paying lip service to the OG Karate Kid fans. The creators clearly pay attention to things like social media and crazy fan theories, because we got several teases in this season that were obviously intended to throw us off guard (there was a tease of Ali possibly being Miguel’s doctor, and a character nicknamed “Ponytail” in Vietnam that was meant for us to think was Terry Silver). While some might think the swerves were a bit much, I appreciate the fact that those behind the show are trying to work stuff like that into a property that already contains a large amount of meta-humor. Out of all the cameos, Elisabeth Shue as Ali was by far the best, because it inserted Ali into the Cobra Kai universe as a shoulder to cry on and the voice of reason. Sure, some may be upset that she wasn’t whisked away by Johnny as another FU to Daniel, but her reassuring Johnny that she will always be there for him was a sweet moment in a pretty heavy finale.
There were two things that rubbed me the wrong way this season, one being that resolutions seemed to happen too easily. Hawk breaks Dimitri’s arm, and did make up for it by saving him from another attack, but moments later the two are hitting combo moves on Cobra Kai bullies. Daniel’s last ditch effort to secure the car deal in Japan is successful because the vice president of sales at the corporation just so happens to be the little girl he rescued in Karate Kid Part II. Even Miguel, who spent all season coming back from a debilitating injury, didn’t have to do much to be his old rival Kyler. Instead, he took shot after shot before hitting three moves and putting Kyler down faster than the Ultimate Warrior did to jobbers on Wrestling Challenge in the late 80’s.
The other complain I had was in regards to Kreese’s backstory. Yes, it was very cool to have the end result be the big reveal that Terry Silver is expected to play into Cobra Kai moving forward, but I felt that showing that Kreese was once a big softie that carried his girl’s picture around detracted from the increased level of sociopathy he showed this season. It got so bad that Amanda LaRusso confronted him (and got dinged with a restraining order for her troubles), but now they wanted us to feel for him because he was lied to by his superiors? I love the character of John Kreese, always have, but I could have lived without the sympathetic touch that they gave him.
Netflix knew it had a hit on their hands when they took Cobra Kai from YouTube, and I hope that the hype surrounding the move and the added exposure seasons 1 and 2 got from it led to even more people taking in season 3. If you’ve been putting it off or have it sitting their in your queue, kick back and watch as these iconic characters battle old rivals, new challenges, and their personal demons all for our enjoyment.
Oh, and one last thing I need to get off my chest… screw you, Robby.
