The third season of Cobra Kai was finally released last month on Netflix and came back pretty strong after the chaotic events of last season’s finale, with the almost perfect mix of drama, action, comedy, and nostalgia.
Following the events of the all out brawl at West Valley High, Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) is put into a coma after getting kicked off the rail, Robby (Tanner Buchanan) is on the run from the law, Johnny (William Zabka) becomes disillusioned with karate, and Daniel (Ralph Macchio) ends up facing bad publicity that could jeopardize his car dealership. With so much high drama in the season two finale, it gave plenty of room for season three to expand and create new plot. An example of this is John Kreese (Martin Kove) benefiting from all of the chaos that has happened, and trying to make the Cobra Kai dojo become what he wants it to be.
The show has also been streamed to over 41 million households within the first 28 days, making it one of the most popular shows on Netflix, according to the official Netflix Twitter account. This season was very enjoyable to watch, and had lots of very wholesome moments between Miguel and Johnny. There was also an ideal mix of high quality action scenes and drama around the students who participated in the school fight.
This season does start off pretty slow, but it continues to ramp up overtime while still elevating the main plot and tension between the three senseis from the original Karate Kid movies. In the same tweet from Netflix, Cobra Kai had 73 million households check out the show between all three seasons, showing how much Cobra Kai has thrived ever since the show was moved onto Netflix.
Some people believed that although this wasn’t the best season, it was still very important to the main plot of the show. John Bagnall, junior, said, “Overall, it wasn’t the best of the three in my opinion, and that’s because I felt like it was more of a setup for the upcoming season of the show.”
I believe this season was extremely good, and almost goes on par with the past seasons, because of how much they keep improving the acting, choreography, and creativity with the direction they go with the story. Some highlights for me was the acting from William Zabka and Xolo Maridueña. They did an amazing job working with each other through this season, and their parts become some of the most noticeable and outstanding performances on the show. In an interview conducted by Entertainment Tonight, Xolo Maridueña, actor for Miguel Diaz, said, “We’ve seen time and time again how similar Johnny and Daniel are, but at the same time just how it feels like oil and water, the two kind of don’t really mix well together. But I will say I think they have a lot to learn from each other.”
Lastly, the nostalgia portion from the older movies was done in a perfect way. They showed familiar characters from the previous movies, all while bringing the plot forward in a new direction, which is how nostalgia should be done correctly.
Some of the few downsides I saw during the season was the lack of fighting scenes; although, whenever there were fights, they turned out great since the quality and choreography has continued to get better and better. The other problem I have is that certain plot points were dragged out and resolved by the end of the season, which I believe is the main issue they needed to work on since those plot threads weren’t tied as fast as they should’ve been.
Overall, I think the writers had a really strong plan of action for what they wanted to happen, and executed it almost perfectly. I personally would say this season was a very worthwhile watch, and is placed as a 4.5 out of 5 because it had a little bit of everything, even though it seemed to lack in some parts.
Jaysen Anderson, Staff Reporter
