Some people believe that The Next Karate Kid shouldn’t have even been on the radar when it came to being made, but it does point out a bit more about Mr. Miyagi’s past than the other two movies did, even though part two took Miyagi and Daniel to Okinawa where we had the chance to learn why Miyagi came to America and why he’d never gone home again. But in The Next Karate Kid, we get to find out that Daniel wasn’t his first student, since Jack Pierce, the grandfather of the young woman, Julie Pierce, who Miyagi would hang around to train, was the first person he taught his family’s karate to. That kind of a revelation is interesting on its own, but the fact that Daniel was a harder student to teach than Julie is something that a lot of fans might not realize right away since the reality is that Julie’s father taught her the same karate that his father taught to him, which was Miyagi-Do, which in turn meant that she had a huge leg up on Daniel since she’d already been exposed to it and didn’t need to be taught entirely from scratch, unlike Daniel, who had only learned karate at the YMCA and was largely unschooled.
Realizing that Miyagi had another student before Daniel isn’t that big of a deal really since it does make a lot of sense when considering that Jack is said to have saved his life during the war. As a way of saying thank you Miyagi gifted his friend the knowledge of his family’s karate, which is a huge gift when one really thinks about it. And teaching his granddaughter years later, or advancing her skills at least, would be another way to pay back the man that saved his life so long ago. While the overall storyline might not have satisfied everyone it did help to delve into Miyagi’s history a bit, especially since we don’t really get to learn a whole lot about him that’s not in the movies. But even more is on the way with the next season of Cobra Kai coming out next year since it’s been implied that Daniel didn’t know Miyagi quite as well as he thought since the old man might have been keeping a few things from him. When thinking of how long a life Miyagi had and all the things he was likely to have done it’s very easy to think that there are some things he kept from Daniel in order to either avoid having to talk about them, or to keep Daniel from finding out more about his life.
One has to wonder at this point if Daniel knows anything about Julie or Jack Pierce, if Miyagi told him anything upon returning from Boston. Would Miyagi have kept this from Daniel? There’s no reason to since it’s not that big of a secret, but at this point, a lot of people are starting to wonder what it is that Daniel doesn’t know about his former mentor and friend, and it’s going to be until next year that we get to find out, Plus, there are plenty of people calling for various figures from the Karate Kid movies to show up since some folks want Terry Silver and others want Julie Pierce to show up, and a lot of folks are hoping that Elisabeth Shue will be featured in the next season. So many things have been happening in the Karate Kid orbit since Cobra Kai came back and turned things around that it’s easy to wonder just how much we knew about anyone since Johnny wasn’t bad from the start, Kreese is even being thought of as being worth a redemption arc, and somehow it would sound as though Miyagi’s past is going to be something of a problem if Daniel gets to find out why he was hiding things from him. To see Hilary Swank return as Julie would be kind of cool since it might help Daniel set things right and possibly center his life again, and it could further the cause of Miyagi-Do karate since both of them are devout students of their mentor. That would actually be pretty cool to see her return since it would indicate some sort of balance that’s been needed in the show.
That’s not to say that Cobra Kai hasn’t been awesome, since both seasons have been highly entertaining. But seeing old faces come back into the picture does sound like it would help to balance the show out just a bit since Cobra Kai going back to its old ways is bound to create a serious imbalance, while Johnny and Daniel teaming up at some point to combat Kreese would make a lot of sense. But to see Julie and Terry come back? That would be epic.
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