Cobra Kai season 6 part 1 strikes hard on Netflix.
Dive in for a full recap of the first five episodes of season six of Cobra Kai, with no major spoilers, but some minor ones.
The final season of Cobra Kai started its run on Netflix when part 1 dropped July 18th, and it consists of 5 episodes.
Recent news revealed that season 6 part 2 will be coming a bit sooner than originally planned, it will be dropping 2 weeks sooner and will be available November 15th, 2024. Season 6 part 3 will land the final kick sometime in 2025.
Some Cobra Kai Background
The series was created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg. Cobra Kai premiered on YouTube Red/YouTube Premium for the first two seasons before moving to Netflix starting with the third. The series stars Ralph Macchio and William Zabka, who reprise their roles as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, respectively, from the 1984 film The Karate Kid and its sequels, The Karate Kid Part II (1986) and The Karate Kid Part III (1989).
In Cobra Kai‘s initial season, Johnny Lawrence is at rock bottom as an unemployed handyman, jinxed by the past 30 years after losing to Daniel LaRusso in the 1984 All-Valley Championship. He helps a kid (Miguel Diaz) from being beaten up by some bullies from Miguel’s school outside a convenience store by using the same karate he was taught years before by Cobra Kai’s sensei John Kreese.
With some convincing and a lot of help from Miguel, Johnny gets a space, decorates it, and gets it up to code. After starting up the new Cobra Kai dojo and with some more help from Miguel, students start to trickle in.
However, one day Daniel notices the dojo and it brings back all the painful times from the encounters with Johnny and revitalizes the life-long rivalry between the two of them.
Now let’s look at season 6 part 1!
Pleasant Beginnings
Season 6 starts on a positive note with the title of the episode being ‘Peacetime in the Valley’. We see the characters are all recovering and moving forward from the trials and tribulations from seasons 1-5.
Daniel LaRusso is happy that Terry Silver and John Kreese have been removed as senseis of the Cobra Kai dojo and the local dojo itself is being decommissioned.
Johnny Lawrence is excited about the upcoming new addition to their family as the rest of the students of Miyagi-Do struggle to put aside past rivalries while training for the upcoming Sekai Taikai tournament.
A new dojo name?
In the season 5 finale, both Cobra Kai and the combined dojos of Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang make it as selections for the Sekai Taikai Tournament, however, the committee informed Daniel and Johnny that only 1 of the dojo names could be selected.
In the first episode of Season 6, Hawk and Demetri announce the student voted on choice of a new Dojo name, however, in the words of Daniel LaRusso, since the name and logo make Mr. Miyagi look like a Karate Vampire, Daniel shoots the idea down. Johnny votes that there should be some compromise with the new dojo name.
Chozen says there should be no compromise on the dojo name since Miyagi-Do has honor and tradition they should stay as Miyagi-Do because Eagle Fang is only a beak with teeth. Since Chozen and Johnny disagree on which name to keep, they decide to fight it out on the sparring deck for which of their respective dojos name to keep for the Sekai Taikai tournament.
The fight
The morning of the fight arrives, and Johnny concedes because after thinking it over he realizes that Eagle Fang is just another version of Cobra Kai, and Cobra Kai is John Kreese’s legacy. He also adds that working with Daniel and Chozen has made him a better sensei, and made the students stronger, so he doesn’t want to teach offense only, he wants to help lead Miyagi-Do to victory and make sure it’s Miyagi’s legacy that lives on. Lawrence and Chozen still decide to fight, because, why not, but in the fight scenes it’s more of a slow-motion friendly exhibition.
We hear Daniel, Johnny, and Chozen narrating that everyone has been through a lot to make it to this point but now they’re all on the same page because they are all Miyagi-Do. Rivalries have been put aside with the slates wiped clean because it’s a new Miyagi-Do. The strongest they’ve ever been, the most badass with one purpose and one team with a name steeped in tradition and honor with a brand-new patch. But they better get ready because now they have to be ready for what the world throws at them.
What did you think of the new patch? Personally, I loved the addition of the eagle soaring over the bonsai tree.
Tempted by the snake
In S6Ep1 while Johnny is getting an item to help him train Rocky IV style, he gets a text from an unknown number asking Johnny to meet up at Coyote Creek, a location used in an earlier season. Johnny replies by asking who was texting him he gets a response “COBRA KAI NEVER DIES”.
Johnny quickly takes off thinking it’s his former Sensei and escaped felon John Kreese. However, upon getting to Coyote Creek, he discovers it’s a former student of his, Raymond Porter, AKA Stingray played by actor Paul Walter Hauser.
Stingray tries to say the right things about Cobra Kai. Stock is at an all-time low, but if Johnny were back at the helm, the students would come back because Johnny got Stingray to believe in himself for the first time in a long time.
He adds that to win the Sekai Taikai it’s going to take a badass dojo and a badass sensei to get it done. Stingray knows that Johnny sided with Miyagi-Do for the greater good, but Miyagi-Do is LaRusso’s legacy and Cobra Kai is Johnny’s legacy.
I thought Johnny was going to take up Stingray’s offer, and he still could do just that if he wanted, I mean the show is called Cobra Kai, not Miyagi-Do, right?
Sekai Taikai and college looming
The Sekai Taikai is a Global Karate Competition where dojos from around the globe compete against each other to prove who is best.
In a video sent to each dojo, the Sekai Taikai committee states that this year’s tournament will be held in Barcelona, Spain. They state that with the rules of registration, they want to test each dojo’s quality not quantity, so each dojo must select its top 6 competitors to face off against others around the globe.
(I looked to see if the tournament is real and I hate to break it to you, the Sekai Taikai is a fictional tournament, and the history mentioned by the characters has no basis in real life.)
Through the first 5 episodes, we see some of the main cast stressing about their college or non-college aspirations. Miguel applied to Stanford, Demitri to MIT, Sam is holding out on a few different choices, while Eli ‘Hawk’ is thinking of a true college experience rather than MIT after attending a college frat party. Which causes a stir between him and Demitri.
On the flip side, Robby and Tory don’t see college in their futures due to their backgrounds being in juvie or on probation.
Old rivals becoming friends
The past 5 seasons of Cobra Kai have brought out the best and the worst of all the characters in the show, besides Johnny and Daniel’s ongoing feud we mostly see a big rivalry between Samantha LaRusso and Tory Nicols. Since the day they met, they have been at each other’s throats and have had some major fight scenes that have left both scarred mentally and physically.
Miguel and Robby team up to see if the animosity between Tory and Sam can be dissolved so they can get back on track under the banner of the dojo.
Some great moments were watching Sam and Tory work past their issues, especially when Johnny steps in and tries to work some magic during a slumber party.
What are your thoughts about Sam and Tory’s past rivalry and this season’s bonding?
Is Johnny growing up?
With Johnny’s girlfriend, Carmen, being pregnant and about to have 6 people living in a 2-bedroom apartment which is falling apart around them, Johnny wants to try to find a house they can move into instead. Chozen, being a fan of the HGTV show Property Brothers says he will go with him to help.
Johnny and Chozen look around a house and Johnny falls in love with it right away. Chozen says that he shouldn’t fall in love with the first property they see, but Johnny isn’t listening. However, Johnny and the property manager butt heads and they leave to look at other properties.
They go and see another house, and of course, the same property manager is there as well. After a short stare down Johnny backs down and the owner of the house recognizes him from back in their middle/high school days. He asks Johnny what his credit like, and Johnny says it probably isn’t very good, but the owner says that if Johnny were able to get a stable job to show regular income, he should be able to get a house from him down the road because he owns multiple homes in the area.
How about a raise?
Johnny goes to talk to Daniel about needing a raise as sensei for Miyagi-Do, he wants the same rate that Chozen gets, and Daniel says that would work because Chozen doesn’t get paid, neither of them do.
That won’t work for Johnny, he feels that being a part of Miyagi-Do would immediately get him in a better standing in all aspects of his life.
Daniel says Miyagi-Do isn’t an overnight fix, and that he should do what he does and get a 9-5 job. Johnny takes that as a job offer to work at the dealership and shows up to work the next day.
There is a funny scene with Daniel and Amanda talking about Johnny working there, but as it turns out Johnny proves himself and lands a job at LaRusso Auto Group.
Top 6 Miyagi-Do selections, bad boy battle
To have an unbiased evaluation process for deciding which Miyagi-Do students will compete in the Sekai Taikai, Daniel calls on the help of Mike Barnes to decide which 6 students will represent the dojo at the tournament.
Barnes competed on a national level just before the events of The Karate Kid Part III and during all his years as the “Tournament Terror” he had always wanted to compete in the Sekai Taikai but blew his chance.
He tells the kids that everyone he knows who competed in the tournament has horror stories. The tournament is intense, unpredictable, and people have died. For the tests of the students, he says he will surprise them with events that will push them to their limits.
He tests the kids for quickness, strength, endurance, and teamwork. For the quickness test, he goes with a play out of Rocky II playbook, by having the kids try to catch a chicken. He chooses the top 12 students from those tests.
The next test
The next day’s test for the remaining 12 students is they each have 5 flags on their bodies, one on each elbow, one on each knee, and one placed on the lower back. It was like watching a cross between capture the flag and flag football with karate mixed in.
The rules: In two minutes take as many of the other student’s flags without losing all of their own. If you lose all your flags, you’re eliminated from the top 6. The students with the most flags advance to the top 6.
Four of the students get eliminated, but 4 students make the top. With 4 students remaining for 2 spots Barnes says he will go over his notes and announce the final 2 competitors the next morning.
Johnny stops by Mike Barnes’s shop the night after the 2nd day of selections to ask if one of Johnny’s students will make the cut and it quickly escalates to a fight between the two of them. Johnny just wanted to make sure that the student he was looking out for got a fair shake.
Which bad boy comes out on top?
For the final day’s test, Barnes has the 4 remaining students compete against each other in a capture-the-flag event in the woods. Two flags are hidden deep in the forest, and the first two students to bring back the flags make the final roster.
When asked what happens if two students find a flag at the same time, Barnes says they are on their own and will have to fight for it.
Two students bring back the flags and the top 6 are set, however, one of the winning two tipped the scales in their favor and it was blamed on one of the students who had been eliminated the day before.
Mike Barnes tells Johnny that since karate has come back into his life he has been itching for a fight and that he thought it would help him recapture some sense of his power.
He later tells Daniel that this whole thing has really dredged up his demons, but thinks the fight with Johnny the night before got most of it out of his system.
Do you agree with the way Barnes tested the kids? How did you feel about the top 6 selected?
Choosing the Miyagi-Do captains
With the Sekai Taikai needing the final rosters of each dojo, male and female captains need to be selected. The captains will be the ones fighting in the finals if they make it that far, which means they will be fighting on live TV and be in the spotlight for Miyagi-Do.
Johnny and Daniel decide that to be completely unbiased the top 4 students (2 females, 2 males) will fight each other under tournament rules. Samantha LaRusso and Tory Nicols will face off against each other for the female captain spot while Robby Keen and Miguel Diaz will fight for the male captain spot.
They set the matches to take place in 3 days’ time for training, and this becomes another sticking point between Johnny and Daniel. Johnny trains Tory, Miguel, Sam, and Robby on the first day while Daniel looms around silently criticizing some of Johnny’s training techniques.
The day after Daniel schedules Johnny to handle test drives at work to sideline Johnny from being around for training the kids. This was a low blow from Daniel. They should have split up the kids and trained them separately then switch up the day after.
What are your thoughts about the training process?
The captain selection fights are the final fight sequences of the first 5 episodes, and if they are a build-up of what’s to come in the next 5 episodes with the Sekai Taikai, we are going to be in for a treat with an array of amazing battles on the mats.
John Kreese: ‘the way of the fist’
After escaping prison in the season 5 finale, Kreese takes refuge in Korea and begins training fighters alongside Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim).
Kreese receives a test from his very first, and by this time, very old sensei Master Kim. Kreese must retrieve an ancient family knife from a cave that Master Kim left behind when he was just a boy. But he gets a warning that in the darkness he will find more than just the knife.
In the cave, Kreese is faced with something blocking him from the knife. He then faces the failings of his past and his weakness in a sort of ayahuasca trip.
Kreese passes the test and steps in to help Master Kim’s granddaughter Kim Da-Eun help with the students train up for the Sekai Taikai. He is tasked with getting one of the students in line, Kwon, played by Brandon H. Lee, and does so in his own way.
Kreese and Kim Da-Eun lead Cobra Kai to the Sekai Taikai to face off against other dojos from around the globe with a surprise on their side.
Mr. Miyagi’s dark past?
Daniel, Amanda, and Chozen discover a hidden space below Miyagi’s bed and inside the space is a box. They discuss whether to open the box, and this scene is like watching an angel and devil on Daniel’s shoulders giving the pros and cons options. Amanda says they should open it because the curiosity might kill her. Chozen says that sometimes it’s better not to have an answer, that anything is possible and once it’s open they face the truth.
In the box is a bunch of small items and memorabilia from Miyagi’s past that Daniel has never seen before. The big one was a newspaper clip from May 3rd, 1947, about police searching for a culprit in a violent robbery and assault. The victim of the assault identified his attacker as Keisuke Miyagi. However, Daniel always knew Miyagi as having the first name of Nariyoshi.
Did Miyagi change his name? Or perhaps was this a relative of his? Will we get the full story by the end of this series?
Digging deeper
After finding an address on a passport they go to see if they could get some answers to some questions. They got some answers but the mystery surrounding it all still lingers.
Daniel feels tormented about why Miyagi never told him about his past, or the very least, this past they have uncovered. Amanda tries to calm him down by saying they don’t tell their kids everything, especially about something that happened in Cancun.
What happened with Daniel and Amanda in Cancun? I hope we get more concrete answers before the end of part 3.
Balance
Later, Amanda tells Daniel that the one word she’s heard a lot of about Mr. Miyagi’s karate is balance, and that Daniel has been off balance since opening Miyagi’s hidden box. Daniel says it’s scary knowing there is a part of Miyagi’s life he didn’t know and the reason behind it has him afraid to know what that might be. Amanda tells Daniel that maybe it’s a good thing that he might never know, and that he can stop worrying about the past and focus on the present.
After the fights to decide on the male and female captains, Daniel notices the pattern on the headbands for the captains is the same as the headband that was in Mr. Miyagi’s box, which means that Miyagi fought in a Sekai Taikai Tournament in the past.
Even more mysterious is there are blood stains on the headband which leads us to wonder if it was Miyagi’s blood or another competitor’s. It also leads us to wonder if we will get some of these answers in the next batch of episodes or if this will drag into next year to ramp up the intrigue of the final 5 episodes.
I’m anticipating it will be in the final 5 episodes which will set up the Karate Kid movie which is in the works with Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan.
Hopefully, maybe I’m wrong. I would love to see all the questions answered by the end of this series.
Fight sequences
If there’s nothing this show lacks it’s the fight sequences and these first 5 episodes had them in spades. I have seen some behind-the-scenes videos and pics from past seasons that reveal that some of the big fight scenes during the All-Valley Championships used ropes and pulley systems for high-flying kicks and spins.
Even though they use ropes and pulleys it doesn’t seem to me to make the fights seem fake or like a hoax.
What were your favorite fight scenes or sequences?
Bring back those nostalgic feelings
For those of you who love nostalgia who grew up watching the Karate Kid movies in the 80’s and haven’t started watching Cobra Kai yet, you would love all the callbacks to past characters from all three movies. Obviously, the main two are Daniel and Johnny, besides those two characters we get episodes with a lot of past characters. With a lot of flashbacks to the first three movies sprinkled throughout the series, especially of Mr. Miyagi.
I hope that as fans we get closure and balance from the outcomes of the storylines that have been coming up for over 5 seasons.
‘No Mercy’ for some rivalries
Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso have had this lifelong adversarial approach to each other, and with this show, we see it in spades. During Cobra Kai each time we think the hatchet is going to be buried between these two characters, and they can move past 30 years of hatred for each other, something happens, and it resets the whole dynamic between them.
Johnny now being a Miyagi-Do sensei, his life seems to be balancing out in ways that I’m happy to see for the character. Towards the end of S6Ep5, the dynamic that was building up between Johnny and Daniel through these first five episodes comes crashing down.
If you’ve watched all of Season 6 Part 1, whose side are you on? Was Daniel right? Did Johnny have a valid point that the student needed to work through it? Will it hurt Miyagi-Do in the tournament?
Only time will tell.
Cobra Kai main cast
Ralph Macchio – Daniel LaRusso
William Zabka – Johnny Lawrence
Courtney Henggeler – Amanda LaRusso
Xolo Maridueña – Miguel Diaz
Tanner Buchanan – Robby Keene
Mary Mouser – Samantha LaRusso
Jacob Bertrand- Eli ‘Hawk’ Moskowitz
Peyton List- Tory Nichols
Vanessa Rubio – Carmen Diaz
Gianni DeCenzo – Demitri Alexopoulos
Martin Kove – John Kreese
So many storylines, what’s next?
In just these first 5 episodes we see a lot of moments and storylines coming into play. Which were your favorite ones?
Some of my favorite moments are:
- Johnny and Chozen house shopping
- Kyler’s college experience
- Johnny’s Jerry Maguire moment
- Lethal Weapon 2 reference during the gender reveal party
- Johnny trying to stir up Tory and Sam
- Nods to Phillipe’s and Art’s Delicatessen. What are your most anticipated storylines playing out in the next 5 to 10 upcoming episodes? For me, it’s the Sekai Taikai tournament which has been a focal point of the past season.
What challenges are the students going to face even without factoring in Cobra Kai’s fighters?
Please leave a comment on your favorite Season 6 moments thus far.
ICYMI: Locations Manager Dodd Vickers talks ‘Sharp Objects’, ‘Cobra Kai’ and more (somanyshows.com)
Leave a Reply