If you haven’t seen any of Cobra Kai season 3 at this point then you might want to stop reading since there are going to be a lot of spoilers. But if you’re right there with a lot of us and want to know more then keep reading since the third season of the show has seen it get better and better as the coming fourth season, which will no doubt be coming unless something disastrous happens, should be the capper to an otherwise epic tale that has so far been nothing but great. The downside is that as of now there’s no telling just when season 4 will begin filming thanks to the continued need for safety with the pandemic still in effect. But the third season has given us a lot of hope thus far since even in a PC, bubble-wrapped world there’s still a need for self-defense and the skills that come with being a badass. If you couldn’t guess already, Johnny and Daniel have been doing a lot of soul-searching, but by the end of the season, it became clear that they’d both been half-blind to what was really needed to create balance, and have finally figured it out, at least for now.
The season started off more or less as one would have expected, with the school instituting new safety protocols and the city and its people blaming the current unrest on karate itself, not to mention the two men that introduced a decades-old feud that kicked off a small war between their competing dojos. But while Miguel’s case was a sad one the fact that he’s made a recovery in this season is amazing, not to mention important, since he was the first to see past Kreese’s machinations as he stuck with Johnny and his need for something different. Hawk obviously didn’t see things this way, at least not until it was almost too late, since his character, along with others, has undergone a serious transformation that makes it clear that the nice kid he started out as was finally poking his head out again, gaining clarity after it became obvious that Kreese was using his students in ways that no sensei should ever even consider. The redemption arcs in this season, as well as the irritating PC attempts to stifle the continued tension between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do, have been interesting and more than self-explanatory, since surprise surprise, even cousin Louis LaRusso has become a better person, even if he’s still a bit of a tool. His heart is in the right place at least.
It’s amusing to see how many of the theories that were tossed about all year kind of went out the window, especially when it came to Chozen, who came back for a couple of episodes and initially looked as though he wanted to break Daniel in two. But upon finally seeing the two of them spar, it was revealed that Mr. Miyagi’s big secret was that he knew far more about karate than just how to use it defensively, which anyone should have been able to guess since he kicked the crap out of Kreese and Terry Silver in the movies. But the pressure point attacks are something new, and the fact that Miyagi-Do was about offense just as much as defense to start with, was the big secret. Plus, the fact that Chozen actually forgave Daniel and was just waiting to get him in the same position he’d been in all those years ago was actually enough to make a person smile as they realized that Chozen had in fact changed, and was grateful for the chance. But Kreese, ah John Kreese, seeing his flashbacks, and then seeing how much Tory has on her plate, sick mother, taking care of her brother, trying to pay rent, all of it conspires to tell us that nearly everyone has problems and that the choices they make to fend off those problems or push past them ends up making them who they are. So Kreese had a horrible commander in Vietnam, Tory has a landlord that was pushing up on her until Kreese came around, and all in all, Kreese is still the problem since he’s just manipulative as ever and has never been able to let go of his own demons.
But the ending of the season is enough to make a person roll their eyes in the best of ways since not only does Kreese end up sending his students to Daniel’s home to confront Daniel and Johnny’s students combined, but it finally has the effect of bringing Johnny, Daniel, and their students together in a common cause as everyone was hoping to see. In fact, the only drawback is that after all that’s happened, Robby has fallen into Kreese’s snare after learning that Miguel and Samantha LaRusso are back together. Coupled with the fact that Kreese made a phone call to a mysterious someone that we hope is Terry Silver, season 4 is going to be another epic chapter in the history of Cobra Kai.
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