PLOT: At the Sekai Taikai, Miyagi-Do faces new challenges and old enemies as they fight to become world champions — can they stay united as internal rivalries bubble back to the surface?
REVIEW: When the first five episodes of Cobra Kai‘s final season debuted in July, I was underwhelmed by the repeated retread of familiar storylines. Cobra Kai VI, the lowest-rated season of The Karate Kid spin-off series, has only premiered a third of its final season so far, leaving ten of the fifteen chapters to debut. The second batch of episodes continues where the first left off, setting up a showdown at the Sekai Taikai tournament between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai, along with some other competition. Once again, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka are a charismatic pairing, whether on opposite sides or the same one. However, the middle section of Cobra Kai’s final season still feels like it is padded to maintain views for as long as possible rather than set up a satisfying conclusion to the series that debuted in 2018. With some new additions to the cast and a couple of surprising twists, part two of Cobra Kai VI slightly improves over the first but still does not match the quality of prior seasons.
The five-episode Part 2 of Cobra Kai VI picks up right from the cliiffhanger ending that revealed that Tory Nichols (Peyton List) had joined Martin Kreese’s (Martin Kove) new dojo with co-sensei Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim). With the writers explaining how Kreese could publically appear despite being an escaped criminal, the format of the Sekai Takai tournament is explained. For some reason, the first rounds of competition are brawl-style or tag-team competitions between the dozen dojos, including teams from Spain, Ireland, Russia, and more. The main competition outside of Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai are the Iron Dragons, led by Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan) and his star fighters Axel Kovacevic (Patrick Luwis) and Zara Malik (Rayna Vallandingham). The third faction in the five-season brewing feud adds some dimension to the competition. Still, it cannot eclipse the fact that Cobra Kai continues to mine the exact same plot structure season after season after season.
Without fail, this season has infighting amongst the Miyagi-Do team as they question each other’s allegiances. Miguel (Xolo Mariduena) questions Robbie’s (Tanner Buchanan) leadership as team captain, Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) and Eli (Jacob Bertrand) continue to squabble about their falling out over college choices, and Devon (Oona O’Brien) still feels guilt over what she did to cost Kenny (Dallas Dupree Young) a spot in the tournament. These disagreements boil over with Robbie and Sam (Mary Mouser) troubled by Tory’s defection to the enemy and the intimidation from Cobra Kai captain Kwon (Brandon H. Lee). Kreese still threatens boy Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny (William Zabka), but Daniel is still trying to discover the truth about Mr. Miyagi’s past and how it connects to the Sekai Takai. For the most part, Daniel and Johnny’s ongoing opposition to one another takes a back seat in this run of episodes, but that does not mean it is entirely gone.
We get some fun moments with Daniel, Johnny, and Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), but unlike prior seasons, most of these five episodes feature in-tournament competition. Sure, there are a couple of training montages and some connections to The Karate Kid feature films in the form of cameos, but this run of Cobra Kai VI is the most actual martial arts we have seen in the entirety of the series combined. The quality of the fights is improved by including athletic performers Lewis Tan and Rayna Vallandingham, the latter of whom are champion martial artists in real life. The Barcelona setting serves as a nice location change from the tried-and-true Valley. Still, outside of a couple of outdoor sequences that make great use of the geography of the Spanish city, most of the action takes place in hotel rooms and gymnasiums. I appreciate the heavier focus on competition in these episodes, but it still feels like it is treading water.
Writers Joe Piarulli, Luan Thomas, Bob Dearden, and Chris Rafferty build on the first five episodes of the season with the aid of Ashley Darnall, Emily Abbott, and Olga Lexell. They do their best to make the Sekai Taikai tournament feel like a big deal and a culmination of where the prior seasons have led, but they do not seem to want to deviate from the familiar tropes that have become staples of this series. Cobra Kai started out as a nostalgiac homage to The Karate Kid that evolved into a balance of the younger generation of fighters alongside the older ones. This season’s twists replicate twists we have seen before, with the big reveal concerning Mr. Miyagi still feeling like a misdirect to keep some artificial tension in Daniel LaRusso as a sensei. Too many artificial conflicts pad out this middle section of the final season that could have been condensed into one or two episodes.
The sixth season of Cobra Kai felt like a couple of episodes too long, and the second part feels the same. Thanks to better fight choreography and an ending to the fifth episode (overall, the tenth episode of the season), which is the darkest place this series has gone yet, Cobra Kai VI Part 2 is a modest improvement over the first part of the season. The increase in profanity is not a replacement for mature writing, but I had more fun with this run than with the five episodes released earlier this year. It remains to be seen if the third and final batch of episodes will tie things up or lead into the upcoming Karate Kid: Legends film, but I hope Cobra Kai brings this story to a close in a way that does not repeat the same things we have seen season after season from this show.
Cobra Kai VI Part 2 premieres on November 15th on Netflix.