The penultimate ‘Cobra Kai’ episodes pack a delightful punch

The sequel to John G. Avildsen's 1980s martial arts movie franchise The Karate Kid, the show debuted in 2018, picking up decades after the L.A. high school feud between scrawny underdog Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio)—now a wealthy car dealer—and his former bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), who, poetically, began the series living out of his car. Much has transpired since then, with Daniel and Johnny resuming their rivalry before teaming up to teach the new generation of students at Miyagi-Do, the dojo once run by Daniel's sensei, the iconic Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki "Pat" Morita). Numerous heroes and villains from the trilogy have re-appeared, played by their original actors, which speaks directly to how the weight of the past dangles around each character's neck like an albatross.

Like the original films, the newly released season six, part two pivots around a major tournament, but brings all the kitschy high school drama of prior seasons crashing down on its teenage cast, who inherit the franchise's sports anime legacy. Which is to say: karate is the language through which every disagreement is solved, and every friendship rekindled. This is especially true of the Sekai Taikai, the fictitious international championship taking place in Barcelona. This season has the travelog feel of Avildsen's Okinawa-set The Karate Kid Part II, and it also doubles down on the series' subtle pro wrestling vibes, since the tournament drafts each dojo into a number of bizarre tag team fights, the outcome of which depends on how well-oiled they are as a single unit.

That's a tall task for the kids at Miyagi-Do, most of whom are nearing the end of high school, resulting in unpredictable emotions, and tensions reaching a boiling point. Headstrong former rivals Robby Keene (Tanner Buchanan) and Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña)—Johnny's son and step-son respectively—now have a cordial, brotherly dynamic, which finds itself strained by the tournament's pressures. Robby's tough-as-nails girlfriend Tory Nichols (Peyton List) has defected to rival dojo Cobra Kai—run once more by the ruthless, returning John Kreese (Martin Kove)—which stresses her own uneasy friendship with Daniel's contentious daughter Sam (Mary Mouser). Meanwhile, supporting comic relief duo Demetri Alexopoulos (Gianni DeCenzo) and Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz (Jacob Bertrand) try to mend their broken bonds before heading off to college, while Miyagi-Do newcomer Devon Lee (Oona O'Brien) deals with mounting self-doubt, having cheated her way onto the team earlier in the season.

While the competitors are fittingly immersed in Disney Channel-style antics, the adults' stories veer between the extremes of domestic melodrama—A sudden hospitalization! Deep, dark secrets revealed!—and surprisingly fluffy developments. For instance, Japanese The Karate Kid Part II villain Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto), now a Miyagi-Do sensei himself, develops a fun and unexpected dynamic with Cobra Kai second-in-command Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim), who struggles to find her softer side after years training in her grandfather's shadow in South Korea. Like the kids, even the show's middle-aged adults (Daniel, Johnny, Chozen, and Da-Eun) are trying desperately to shake off the weight of the past, a time when the likes of Cobra Kai head honcho Kreese—who was already an adult during the movies—came to define their lives. Cobra Kai's unforgiving method's still loom large over every character, as they search for ways to find balance through cooperation.

This quest is made especially enjoyable by the colorful characters both Miyagi Do and Cobra Kai are pitted against in Barcelona. The Sekai Taikai is where the best of the best do battle, leading to the introduction of a formidable new dojo, the Iron Dragons. The team is led by Lewis Tan's hilariously named Sensei Wolf, and populated by the likes of snooty, South Asian martial arts influencer Zara Malik (Rayna Vallandingham), and perhaps the most interesting new addition to the Cobra Kai roster: Axel Kovacevic (Patrick Luwis). While the Eastern European brawler resembles Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) from Rocky IV, he has suppressed vulnerabilities too—à la Ivan's son Viktor, played by Florian Munteanu in the Rocky sequel Creed II—which slowly emerge when he runs into Sam while spending time in the city.

These Rocky comparisons are just as vital to the new season of Cobra Kai as anything from the Karate Kid series, in part because the two franchises have common DNA, since Avildsen directed the first and fifth Rocky movies. As the latter series went on, it became a gaudy Cold War drama about solving geopolitical issues in the boxing ring. Cobra Kai may not have quite the same penchant for nationalistic ideology (it is, by comparison, incredibly apolitical), but the Sekai Taikai stage allows the new kids from the Valley, rich and poor alike, to compete against fighters from all over the world, given the show's latest season a grandiose feel. There's no real agenda to it beyond aping the broad appearance of Reagan-era action, which—given the show's sheer lack of jingoistic sentiment—is likely for the best. Characters still flaunt their national leanings (Eli even dyes his Mohawk in the colors of the American flag), but all of this is secondary to the unfolding adolescent drama.

The closest the season comes to something deathly serious is Daniel's quest to find out more about Miyagi's mysterious past, and his history with the Sekai Taikai, which leads him down some unexpected paths as he tries to find out more about his late mentor. Miyagi's metaphorical ghost hovers over Daniel's every move, threatening to complicate the sagely view he holds of his former sensei, and in the process, distracting him from his own duties towards his students. The series may depend on nostalgia, but it also presents the characters' pristine recollections as imperfect and incomplete. Unfortunately, the show does make one ugly misstep by using a garish digital recreating of the late Morita—a severe ethical breach that's become all too common in Hollywood—though thankfully, this more literal ghost only appears for a handful of seconds in a fleeting dream sequence.

For the most part, Cobra Kai's relationship to the past is complex and ever-evolving, with the central characters of the original film series wrestling with the hold karate has over them, and with their inability to express themselves in any other way. The ludicrousness of this shōnen-like expression is especially spotlighted when characters from outside the karate world, like Daniel's wife Amanda (Courtney Henggeler), react to just how out of hand things get in the world of hand-to-hand combat—and they certainly do this season, with brawls that match the infamous high school-wide fight in season two.

However, as soon as Cobra Kai dips its toe back into its default storytelling language, it becomes exhilarating. Not every episode finds balance between the various storylines, but dropping all five 30-minute episodes at once allows each individual entry to be slightly narratively unwieldy while letting the slickly produced action speak for itself. The twists and turns are ripped right out of a soap opera, with long-running storylines returning with a vengeance as the series heads for its climax, a final act whose setup plays with the show's now-familiar tropes, but takes them to shocking new conclusions. It's a blast.