One Cobra Kai episode from the initial seasons draws a clear picture of what the show will be about and how its future rivalries will unfold. Picking up after three decades from Karate Kid‘s events, Cobra Kai does an incredible job at highlighting how old rivalries give birth to new ones and how new ones evolve into even bigger misunderstandings and more bad blood. In its five-season runtime, the show has seemingly reinvented the original Karate Kid formula in nearly every possible way, portraying all the potential narrative avenues a Karate Kid TV spin-off could explore.
However, despite borrowing story elements from the original Karate Kid movies, Cobra Kai performed well because it maintained an element of surprise and novelty with each season. Its character feuds may have been predictable, but their outcome always caught viewers off-guard. Even in season 5, Cobra Kai kept its storyline fresh by establishing that not all conflicts have to escalate into full-blown unredeemable confrontations. But as unpredictable as Cobra Kai might have seemed, one of its early episodes had already foreshadowed its entire storyline.
Cobra Kai Season 6 Will Miss A Major Opportunity If Doesn’t Explore 1 Key LaRusso Relationship
Cobra Kai season 6 will miss a major opportunity if it does not delve deeper into the inner workings of 1 key relationship from the LaRusso family.
Cobra Kai Season 1, Episode 9 Tells You What The Show Is Going Be
Cobra Kai season 1’s episode 9 perfectly captures what the rest of the show would be about by paving the way for its primary rivalries. In the episode’s opening arc, Johnny and Daniel nearly get into a fight, but Amanda interrupts and convinces Daniel to get Johnny a car from his lot. What begins as a car sale soon turns into a trip down memory lane as Johnny and Daniel show early signs of burying their beef. As the show intercuts between the past and the present, the two characters recall everything from kicking each other’s butts to looking up to their karate senseis as father figures.
While Daniel and Johnny slightly warm up to one another, their students, Miguel and Robby, embody their worst traits. After seeing Sam show up at a party with Robby, Miguel does what Johnny once did to Daniel: he gets jealous and starts a fight. Miguel and Sam’s misunderstanding escalates, marking the inception of the Miguel-Sam-Robby-Tory love quadrangle. By the time the episode ends, Daniel and Johnny’s rivalry also takes a new turn when Robby steps in front of Johnny and holds his fists up to threaten his father. With this, by walking through the whole gamut of potential relationships and rivalries in the overarching storyline, Cobra Kai season 1, episode 9 gives a glimpse of how the show’s past, present, and future stories intersect.
Cobra Kai Season 5 Finally Broke Free Of The Show’sTropes
The Miyagi-verse has been all about karate rivalries and toxic paternal figures since the first Karate Kid film. However, by highlighting how Johnny and Daniel have finally matured enough to understand the long-term implications of their conflict, Cobra Kai season 5 finally breaks free of the franchise’s tropes. While Daniel and Johnny keep their fists down for once and try empathizing with one another, Robby and Miguel, too, fight for the last time to realize where they went wrong. Tory and Sam may still have some work to do before they can become friends. However, as Cobra Kai season 5 establishes, they are not too far from fostering a relationship of understanding and camaraderie like Robby and Miguel.
