Hiya!

I really have to stop making promises to myself.

When Netflix revealed the 6th season of Cobra Kai would be the final season of the series, I promised myself I would be doing the review for it. After all, I did review the previous couple of seasons of this Karate Kid spinoff. I might as well finish the entire thing, right?

What I didn’t know how Netflix would make this the longest season of the show, spanning 15 episodes instead of the usual 10 episodes. Netflix even broke it up into 3 chunks and this kind of made it a slog to review as, just for due diligence, I would re-watch the previous chunk before getting into the current one. Well, now that it’s all over, I’m finally getting into the review of the final season and my brain is figuring out how to disseminate my thoughts on it. That’s because I have a lot to say but, at the same time, it does feel like I’m going to be talking about a whole bag of nothing.

Okay, before I do get into the review proper, I will have to preface it by mentioning this will be a SPOILER FILLED review. This is against my usual protocol of not giving anything away when something is new. I’m making an exception here for a couple of reasons. One, the first part of the last season of Cobra Kai was released way back in middle of July of last year! That’s a whole 8 months ago! That’s long enough. Two, a lot of my thoughts on the show does focus on a lot of plot points brought up throughout. So, in order to make my thoughts clear, I do have to mention what these plot points are. Okay, with all that out of the way, on to the SPOILER FILLED review!

The sixth season of Cobra Kai takes place just after the combined forces of Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang, Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence‘s dojos, respectively, essentially discredit the USA branch of Cobra Kai and take down Terry Silver. Both combine their dojos into one united school and join the Sekai Taikai. However, in the shadows, John Kreese goes back to Korea with a plan to join the Sekai Taikai to bring Cobra Kai back to glory.

As I mentioned before, this season is broken up into 3 chunks and I can see that’s by design as each chunk works like their own season in a way. The first chunk has Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence trying to work together as well as which students of the new combined Miyagi-Do dojo to compete in the Sekai Taikai. The middle chunk is the actual Sekai Taikai tournament up to the semi-finals and the third is the championship matches. It does make things easy to digest as they are segmented in this way. The problem is each chunk, besides maybe the last one, doesn’t have a satisfying conclusion.

The increased length of the full season also leads to my biggest issue: filler. There are some overarching stories which do carry from one chunk to the next. The problem is a lot of them are either forgotten and hastily wrapped up, making them feel unnecessary or they don’t really add anything. A good example is Daniel LaRusso’s discovery that his master, Mr. Miyagi, may have mugged someone to steal a necklace.

Well, that’s just there to sow some doubt on Mr. Miyagi and if he was actually a good guy during the first 2 parts of the season. That’s all pretty much forgotten until the very last season when it’s revealed the necklace Mr. Miyagi stole was actually his wife’s, who a guard took when she was in an internment camp during World War II. This just felt unnecessary and, in fact, Daniel LaRusso’s entire side quest to figure out the answer throughout the entire season completely moot as it didn’t really add anything.

I also have to talk about the Sekai Taikai itself as it just didn’t live up to expectations. Previously, they talked about how the Sekai Taikai was supposed to be this very dangerous tournament. Then, when it came to the actual tournament, things felt very safe and, well, organized to a tee. Sure, you had dumb things where the competitors would fight in some kind of elevated platform. That doesn’t seem too deadly when the entire arena is padded!

The writing for the characters also comes off as very wonky. There are several reasons why I loved the first few seasons of Cobra Kai. There was Johnny Lawrence’s story of redemption with teaching Miguel Diaz to defend himself. Daniel LaRusso trying and initially failing to be a force of good for Robby Keene. These were stories of teachers bonding with their students. Well, for this season, the student-teacher relationship is pretty non-existent. They feel more like soldiers fighting in a war against John Kreese and Terry Silver’s students and whatnot. The connection they used to have isn’t the focus anymore and that feels weird, especially since it was the focus of the first few seasons.

I also didn’t care for how this season introduces even more bad guys than before! John Kreese has teamed up with his old master in Korea and had this branch of Cobra Kai compete in the Sekai Taikai. Terry Silver, despite getting arrested, is now free and is now in control of a new dojo, the Iron Dragons. While I get John Kreese’s motivation as he wants to make Cobra Kai a premiere and world-renown dojo, I don’t get why Terry Silver is doing all this. The only thing I can think of is he only has a few months to live and he wants to leave a legacy… or he’s just crazy. Either way, I don’t understand why he would go through all the trouble.

The storylines also feel much more cliche and cheesy than ever before. I’ve already mentioned the “Mr. Miyagi is a mugger” storyline but there are other examples. Things like the main male fighter of the Iron Dragons not being a bad guy but he was just trained to be a bad guy. There’s also how the main female fighter of the Iron Dragons hitting on Robby Keene in order to get under the skin of now Cobra Kai member Tory Nichols. Now, I don’t mind cliches in stories… as long as they’re done well. It’s not done well here.

I will say the fight choreography throughout the entire season is a whole lot more fun to watch as there are more flips and dips than what you would see in a real tournament. However, they do fit well in a martial arts movie. The problem is, because of how terribly written the characters are in this season, I don’t really care what happens to them. So, it is beautiful to look at but I’m not invested in the outcome.

I just didn’t like the final season of Cobra Kai. However, I half expected it to be bad because of the slow decline of the show’s quality. I’ve also talked about how Cobra Kai isn’t what the show was supposed to be originally anymore. I guess that’s the biggest reason why I just didn’t click with this season. It’s lost its balance and decided to be something totally different and it’s not what I signed up for.

Oh, well. Now that it’s over, at least we won’t have to deal with the Karate Kid franchise doing kung-fu like that one weird movie with Jackie Chan anymore, right?

Goddamit.

Byee!

What did you think of the final season of Cobra Kai? Let me know in the comments section below!