The upcoming fourth season of Cobra Kai will be bringing another familiar face from the original movie franchise to the Netflix series: Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith). The character was first introduced in The Karate Kid Part III as a ruthless businessman who served with John Kreese (Martin Kove) in the Vietnam War. He was also the one who originally founded the Cobra Kai dojo. The final moments of Cobra Kai‘s third season found Kreese reaching out to Terry Silver once again and the character is set to have a big presence in the new season.
While speaking with GameSpot, Cobra Kai co-showrunner Hayden Schlossberg said that the return of Terry Silver has been in the works since the very beginning of the series.
We love the Terry Silver character from Karate Kid III. We’ve talked about his character from the beginning, you know, from before writing the first episode. You just don’t know at what point he’s going to enter in the early days. We didn’t say, ‘Okay, it’s gonna be Season 4.’ You really have to kind of plan things out. We knew that we wanted to have a lot of fun with that character and we wanted to devote the story space to that character.
Although The Karate Kid Part III has never been regarded as the high-point of the franchise, the Cobra Kai creators couldn’t resist bringing Terry Silver back into the fold. “[We get to] explore the craziness that is Terry Silver,” Schlossberg said. “We understand that movies like Karate Kid III and Rocky 4 back in the ’80s were not considered like the critical darling that the original movies like Rocky and Karate Kid were. But we were just kids at the time watching these movies and you just kind of fall in love with Drago, even though it’s kind of ridiculous. And Terry Silver was sort of like that, to this franchise.“
The fourth season of Cobra Kai will debut on Netflix on December 31st, but you can check out a review from our own Alex Maidy right now!