Cobra Kai is one of Netflix’s most watched series. The first two seasons, which aired on Youtube in 2018, were arguably the best two seasons of this show’s entirety. With season six recently airing its third installment which includes the finale of the series, it raises the question: what happened to Cobra Kai?
Cobra Kai is a spinoff series to the much beloved Karate Kid franchise from 1984, which successfully made three films and two spin off films (three as of May 2025,) before landing a television series; Cobra Kai.
The first two seasons were produced by the subscription service Youtube Red (now Youtube Premium) before changing ownership to Netflix in 2020 to increase viewership, and to continue the previously niche series.
Cobra Kai stars the main protagonist of the Karate Kid films, Daniel Larusso, played by Ralph Macchio, alongside the antagonist of the movies, Johnny Lawrence, played by William Zabika. The show follows their lives years after the events of the films, which now include their families and children, who all get caught up in similar conflicts because of karate.
The show, at its core, began as a young adult action-comedy that was entertaining for first-time viewers, along with die-hard Karate Kid fans. The series had a unique audience, having created a show that both teens and their parents could enjoy together, and in many cases, including my own, created a bond between parents and children over their love for this show.
However as the seasons went on, the tone of the series shifted from a show about teens for teens, to a show about adults (with brief storylines about their teenage children,) thus losing their teenage audiences’ attention. This raises more questions about what the end goal of this series truly was.
The switch from Youtube Red to Netflix gained more attention, along with a much higher production budget. This should have been used to enhance the fight sequences and maybe even hire more teenage actors to join the main cast, creating a bigger universe and expanding the fanbase. However, rather than using the money for the good of Cobra Kai, the producers spent a large sum of their production budget on jamming in as many Karate Kid cameos into the show as possible, bringing back characters that were so forgettable, the editors had to create a flashback to the original films to jog the audiences memory.
While the creators threw their money at actors who likely haven’t been cast since the 1984 film, they neglected to continue the storylines building up in the seasons that came before. This led to the younger cast being in less and less scenes as the show went on, instead focusing screen time on story arcs that created no lasting impact on the audience or the series, and taking away the parts of the show that kept audiences hooked.
A perfect example of this is in the most recent season. Terry Silver, one of the countless antagonists of the show, has been through several story arcs; ones that paint him as a good guy, a bad guy, and everything in between. In the most recent plotline of his, he is battling terminal cancer. Typically, showing an antagonist in a moment of weakness in their life is used to show a level of depth within their character, in order to make the audience feel for them, and maybe even give a motive for their heinous acts.
This would have been the case for Terry Silver in Cobra Kai, if the audience was still emotionally invested in the series. This show has exhausted every main plotline they began to portray, specifically all arcs relating to the characters created for the show.
The dilution of the show’s quality is likely due to the large viewer interest creating a high demand for content thus creating dollar signs in the eyes of the producers. By season four of this series, it was likely that the creators were aware that the show’s consistency and clarity wasn’t the reason that the show was gaining popularity; it was the high-action fight scenes and the “hey, I know that guy!” aspect of the show.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, co-creator Hayden Schlossberg commented about the show; “Now that we’re done, we can actually start getting into this stuff.” This was in reference to future projects relating to the Karate Kid + CobraKai universe. He goes on to say that he and the rest of creative team have “just been focused on ‘Cobra Kai’ and finishing it off,” which makes it seem as though instead of focusing on the show they’ve already worked so hard to produce, trying to make it the best it can be, they’d rather rush to the finale in order to pave way for more projects to come.
Unfortunately, Cobra Kai will never be what it could have been. Whether that be due to a lack of care about captivating the audience or leaning too much into nostalgia-bait, it all leads us to wonder: would Cobra Kai have been better off sticking to their original Youtube roots?
