The world was very different when "Cobra Kai" premiered in 2018.
What was then a fallow '80s movie franchise got revived by YouTube Red, a brand name which no longer exists. Initially, its creators Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg plied whatever warmth Gen X still held for "Karate Kid" rivals Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and his one-time bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) into a fable about a Reagan-era villain atoning for his past missteps.
This continuation aspired to do more than simply depict Daniel and Johnny grappling with ancient history and their juvenile rivalry's ripple effect on local teenagers. The first and second seasons are light parables that take on toxic masculinity, the weight of fatherhood and healing traumatic personal legacies.
In linking a family story about two middle-aged men set on reclaiming their past glory and a passel of teenagers figuring out how to attain their first taste of it, "Cobra Kai" demonstrated a four-quadrant, all-ages draw not unlike the kind that made "Stranger Things" a hit. The difference is that this title directly links to the '80s instead of simply channeling its memories and mood.
As such, when the creators called "Cobra Kai" and the films that inspired it "their 'Star Wars,'" they meant to convey their passion. Invoking George Lucas' multi-generational appealing space opera indicated a level of seriousness about world-building and expansion. Again, that was in 2018.
As "Cobra Kai" embarks on its sixth and final season — words which leave me simultaneously relieved and stunned that it lasted this long – we might view this goalpost differently without judging Hurwitz, Heald and Schlossberg too harshly. They couldn't have known that likening their show to "Star Wars" would age like blue milk.
"Cobra Kai" premiered a year and a half before Disney+ debuted and "The Rise of Skywalker" hit theaters, two developments that changed the value of "Star Wars" as a creative benchmark. To start, the ninth and final movie in the Skywalker saga operates with a structure emblematic of the franchise's inability to innovate or end satisfyingly.
In a similar vein, the "Star Wars" TV extensions suffer from an unwillingness to abandon well-traveled canon and ideate fresh approaches. "Andor" and "The Acolyte" are exceptions, with the former praised by serious critics — but not all, as it's still an easily dismissible "Star Wars" joint — and the latter winning more over as the season progressed.
The "Cobra Kai" creators draw from two simpler and dissatisfying aspects of "Star Wars" lore: the movie's heavy reliance on the fairy tale good and evil binary, as well as a movie plot configuration that boils down to the heroes blowing up the same apocalyptic engine over and over again.
The '80s Lucas films and the recent three cannot quit their Death Stars. Those war machines keep coming back, each slightly more deadly than the last. When J.J. Abrams picked up the torch for the seventh, eighth and ninth movies, he tasked their rebels with blowing up one the size of a dwarf planet.
"Cobra Kai" retrofits this concept to fit its franchise by making its "Under-18 All-Valley Karate Tournament" the equivalent of those climactic dogfights. It's a move that only works so many times.
In this last season, we find the "Cobra Kai" senseis and their pupils preparing for an international vacation to the (entirely made up) Sekai Taikai. The series bills it as a karate world championship, but it sounds a lot like the underground kumite from 1988’s "Bloodsport," minus the deaths (we assume).
But who knows? Martin Kove's John Kreese is still in this thing, having escaped from prison, thanks to the medical personnel's inability to distinguish melted Jell-O from blood.
Sit with that detail for a moment, then take in the fact that he somehow escapes to Korea to hook up with his sinister hard master, whose granddaughter Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim) surfaces in Season 5. Continuing the show's eye-rolling practice of cavorting through mystical Asian stereotypes, Master Kim's students train in a forest and, in 2024, he still lives in a hut.
This is a Yoda inversion you see, and in case you didn't get the memo, Kreese is sent on a mission that ends in a dark cave.
Along with digging up old characters from the films, Kreese foremost among them — as well as Yuji Okumoto's Chozen, one of the wiser carryovers from its "Karate Kid II" redux — the show continuously reheats Daniel’s and Johnny's rivalry. This keeps happening long after they unite to defeat their common enemy.
Since apples don't fall far from trees, Johnny's first student and soon-to-be stepson Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), along with his formerly estranged son Robby (Tanner Buchanan), switch back and forth between Johnny's "way of the fist" and Daniel's gentle continuation of Mr. Miyagi's teachings.
"Cobra Kai" isn't alone in following the "Star Wars" storytelling map. Jason Sudeikis similarly envisioned "Ted Lasso" seasons playing out like "A New Hope," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi," down to having a gentle character turn heel in its second season before redeeming himself in time for the big finish.
Since we know what to expect, nothing leading up to the "twists" in "Cobra Kai" is surprising. Exciting the audience means showing the young characters punch through their problems at — among many places — arcades, Daniel's home, school and, this season, in a frat house.
The final run is the series' longest yet, supersized from the usual 10-episode order to 15, set to be released in a trio of five-part doses. (The first is out now, with the second arriving Nov. 15 and the third coming on a yet-to-be-announced date in 2025.)
Expanded and split seasons used to be an indulgence reserved for groundbreaking prestige series like "The Sopranos" and "Breaking Bad."
Nowadays, streamers like Netflix do it as a matter of chumming their content streams and expanding the shelf life of a show's viewer engagement. It's a cheap play, though, to wring the last juice out of a silly yet winning story about a man in the throes of a midlife crisis attempting to reclaim his youth by opening a strip mall dojo.
"Cobra Kai" evolved beyond that modest premise very quickly by making us curious as to whether Zabka's stuck-in-the-past Johnny would ever rise to meet the moment, reflecting a question much of its audience has about their fellow citizens. That was enough to sustain it for a few seasons. Three should have been enough. Even "Ted Lasso" got that part right.
Sadly, this show chooses to grasp at approximating an '80s saga it never was going to match instead of remaining true to what made it great in the first place and stepping off the mat when it made sense. This makes us anticipate the ending for all the wrong reasons.
The first five episodes of the sixth season of "Cobra Kai" are currently streaming on Netflix.
