cobra

Cobra Kai Season 5 Sweeps the Leg of Doubt Ahead of Season 4

Netflix might as well be the San Fernando Valley, since the streaming giant has karate on its algorithmic brain, thanks to escalating hype from hit television acquisition Cobra Kai. Indeed, the series has just nabbed an advance fifth season renewal, arriving on the heels of a status-elevating Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy amongst other nods. The move occurs as the show’s slowly-teased upcoming fourth season heads toward a still-date-less December release window. After recent changes to Netflix’s formerly-spendthrift content-ordering habits, the renewal certainly solidifies the series as one of the streamer’s primary pillars. Yes, it appears that the high-stakes tournament…
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Terry Silver’s Return Brings A Manipulative Villain to Cobra Kai Season 4

Cobra Kai has spent three increasingly successful seasons of television reintroducing The Karate Kid film franchise’s cast of characters. Unsurprisingly, that effort is now confirmed to continue, thanks to a surprise teaser for the show’s fourth season, which has whetted appetites for the return of a major movie villain, Terry Silver. Indeed, the return of the character, the sinister schemer of 1989’s The Karate Kid Part III, could provide a game-changing sinister force for the show’s escalating war of rival karate dojos. Thomas Ian Griffith is returning as Terry Silver, the villain he played in an entertainingly over-the-top manner in…
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Cobra Kai Season 4 Looks to Deliver Same Recipe for Different Taste

With Cobra Kai having recently wrapped production of its upcoming fourth season, speculation over the show’s escalating onscreen tensions is high amongst its growing legion of fans. However, the cast and crew of the Netflix-migrated series seemingly have black belts in the art of keeping an airtight lid on plot details and cast additions that could even give Marvel Studios a run for its substantial money. While the show’s creators were characteristically mum on Season 4 in a recent sit-down, they did offer intriguing thoughts on their successful creative mindset. Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg…
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Giveaway – Win an iPhone 12 Pro With Cobra Kai: Card Fighter

In the immortal words of Mr. Miyagi: wax on, wax off, win an iPhone 12 Pro.  Officially licensed Cobra Kai mobile game, Cobra Kai: Card Fighter, is set to arrive on March 19 for both iOS and Android. The game will retell the first two seasons of Netflix’s Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai. Users will be able to rebuild Johnny Lawrence’s Cobra Kai gym or continue the tradition of Daniel LaRusso’s Miyagi-do Karate. Via card-based combat, players can build up students to black belts and take on other senseis from around the world. Check out the trailer below! To celebrate…
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Cobra Kai and the Debate Around Cultural Appropriation

This article contains Cobra Kai spoilers. Why aren’t there more Asians in Cobra Kai?  Since Cobra Kai first premiered on YouTube, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications have called out the series for its lack of Asianness. The series also scored poorly on UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report. Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) and Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) are the only non-white main characters. This was exacerbated when the recently-released season 3 excluded Aisha (Nichole Brown), a major character of color who was a fan favorite.  Granted, Cobra Kai does have a few non-white actors in reccurring roles. They just…
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Cobra Kai Season 3: Does Young Kreese Redeem Cobra Kai’s Founding Sensei?

This article contains Cobra Kai spoilers. Cobra Kai season 3 revealed the backstory we didn’t know we wanted – the harrowing Vietnam experience of Cobra Kai’s biggest villain, Sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove). Cobra Kai has been on point when it comes to filling in the personal histories of their characters. The writing team of Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Bob Dearden have keen eyes for details and find reasonable justifications for the actions of its villains. Johnny’s (William Zabka) abusive father Sid (Ed Answer) has provided some redemption to his character’s initial villainy. But Kreese has remained…
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Cobra Kai Season 3: What Happened to Aisha and Stingray?

This article contains Cobra Kai season 3 spoilers. Cobra Kai season 3 brought back several beloved characters from the original Karate Kid movies including Daniel’s first two loves, Ali (Elisabeth Shue) and Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita), Daniel’s second major nemesis Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) and many more. In the process, however, season 3 also left some Cobra Kai characters on the sidelines. Fans sorely missed Aisha Robinson (Nichole Brown) and Raymond a.k.a. ‘Stingray’ (Paul Walter Hauser). Aisha has been part of the series since the beginning. She was the first female student of Johnny’s (William Zabka) Cobra Kai Dojo. Stingray first appeared…
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Cobra Kai Season 4: What to Expect

This article contains Cobra Kai season 3 spoilers. “Hey. Long time,” Kreese (Martin Kove) says at the end of Cobra Kai season 3 when he calls someone mysteriously, as if to ask a favor. Now just who could it be? The most likely candidate is Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), Kreese’s war buddy and the main villain from The Karate Kid Part III. Season 3 of Cobra Kai explored Kreese’s backstory, adding credence to this postulation. We see Young Kreese’s (Barrett Carnahan) traumatic experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and how he saved his friend that he nicknamed…
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Cobra Kai: How the Show’s Martial Arts Level Up in Season 3

This article contains Cobra Kai season 3 spoilers. Despite its iconic standing within the martial arts genre, the martial arts in The Karate Kid have never been outstanding. Sure, the crane kick is a classic, but from a technical standpoint, it’s not that impressive. Ralph Macchio had no martial arts training prior to undertaking the role of Daniel. In many ways, that’s part of the charm. Whether you know martial arts or not, Daniel’s wax on, wax off awkwardness makes Macchio’s portrayal more genuine.  Throughout the film franchise, it was Daniel’s adversaries who were the martial artists. William Zabka (Johnny…
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Cobra Kai: Inside That Surprising Season 3 Cameo

The following contains spoilers for Cobra Kai season 3. When Tory Nichols (Peyton List) first appeared in Cobra Kai, she was the best red herring ever. She introduced herself in season 2 episode 4 “The Moment of Truth” as “Tory… with a ‘Y’” and every fan of the original film went ballistic. In The Karate Kid, Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue) introduced herself to Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) as “Ali… with an ‘I’” so we all wondered if Tory might be Ali’s daughter.  Then season 3 leads us on even more. In the second episode of this season, “Nature vs Nurture,”…
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Cobra Kai Season 3: Breaking Down the Karate Kid Part II Easter Eggs

This article contains spoilers for Cobra Kai season 3. “Are you sure about that?”  Even without seeing who said it, fans of The Karate Kid knew exactly who it was. It had to be Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto), the nemesis of Daniel (Ralph Macchio) from The Karate Kid Part II. The line whetted our appetites at the end of the season 3 teaser released back in August 2020. In December, Netflix released the full season 3 trailer which confirmed the appearance of both Chozen and Daniel’s love interest, Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita).  Cobra Kai has made a habit of delivering heartwarming…
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Cobra Kai: How the Show Tackles Bullying in Season 3

At its heart, The Karate Kid has always been about standing up to bullies. Actually, when it comes right down to it, almost every high school drama is about standing up to bullies. It’s just that The Karate Kid responds with a crane kick to the face. High school bully versus underdog stories are easy to tell, and they resonate with anyone who survived their teenage years. That first major pubescent dose of testosterone or estrogen makes us all want to assert ourselves, and in that search for identity, many find it in bullying. Whether it was Johnny Lawrence (William…
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Cobra Kai Season 3 Clip: Chozen Teases Miyagi Secrets to Daniel

Cobra Kai Season 3’s arrival is nigh, mercifully ending the twenty long, eventually pandemic-permeated months that passed since Season 2; a hiatus recently made slightly shorter by new platform Netflix, which moved up the premiere to New Year’s Day. However, that hasn’t stopped the streamer’s influx of more exciting preview material, namely new footage that sheds light on a potentially explosive narrative teased in one of the previous clips, focused on a potentially sinister secret that the late Mr. Miyagi hid from Daniel. We’ve known for some time now that Cobra Kai’s third season will delve into the sequel side…
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Cobra Kai Season 3: What to Expect

This article contains spoilers for Cobra Kai season 2. It’s been a year and a half already since the Cobra Kai season 2 finale cliffhanger took the show literally over the edge.  The climactic West Valley High School fight in “No Mercy” pushed Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) over that cliff – off a hallway balcony and onto a back-shattering staircase rail. It was a first-rate “long take” fight scene (what’s called a “one-er” in the film biz), the epitome of stunt cinematography because it is so technically challenging. The slightest mistake from anyone involved and everyone must start all over again.…
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Cobra Kai Season 3 Clip: A Returning Kumiko Helps Daniel Connect with Miyagi

The Karate Kid Part II distinguished itself from forgettable sequel contemporaries, with a radical change in locale and a focus on character development in lieu of retreading its predecessor’s plot. Consequently, Cobra Kai Season 3’s recently revealed focus on Part II—revisiting its setting of Okinawa and key characters Chozen and Kumiko—was exciting news. Now, a new preview clip reveals how Daniel’s trip will yield a surprising connection to the late Miyagi.   The clip spotlights the franchise return of Tamlyn Tomita, who reprises her Part II role of Kumiko (the now-prolific actress’s very first onscreen role,) in a scene that…
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Cobra Kai Season 3 Trailer Reveals Karate Kid Part II Characters

When Cobra Kai launched in 2018, it delivered a Crane Kick to the face of skepticism, one packed with humor, humanity and just the right amount of 1980s nostalgia for The Karate Kid films, whose continuity continues on the series. However, the just-dropped trailer for the show’s third season—its first as a Netflix native—has upped the nostalgic ante by digging deeper into the mythos with the confirmed returns of The Karate Kid Part II characters Chozen and Kumiko! There’s a lot to cover when it comes to the New-Year-ringing Cobra Kai Season 3 trailer, but by far the biggest takeaway…
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Cobra Kai Season 3 Release Date Revealed, Netflix Confirms Season 4

Cobra Kai Season 4 has been officially ordered by Netflix! However, before we get ahead of ourselves on that front, there’s more immediate news to cover here, namely the just-dropped release date for Season 3.   Netflix has revealed that Cobra Kai Season 3 will premiere on the platform on January 8, 2021. That key disclosure settles over a year’s worth of speculation regarding the arrival of the show’s surreptitiously-completed third season, which was initially produced for its previous home, YouTube Premium, before an acquisition by Netflix gave the series an exponentially bigger streaming platform. Indeed, Cobra Kai is proving…
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The Real History of Cobra Kai

Cobra Kai Never Dies!  After Netflix acquired Cobra Kai from YouTube Red, it quickly became the #1 streaming show in America. The renewed interest has fans wondering what styles of Karate are portrayed in the series, just like they did back in the 80s when The Karate Kid first came out. Cobra Kai takes plenty of artistic liberties with its portrayals of martial arts training (it’s a show after all – if a sensei really trained his teenagers in a junkyard, their parents would have conniptions).  Nevertheless, as shocking as it sounds, there really was a Cobra Kai. And it…
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The Real Martial Arts Behind Cobra Kai and The Karate Kid

When The Karate Kid premiered in 1984, new students rushed to enroll in Karate Dojos across the nation. However, for anyone aspiring to learn the true ways of Miyagi-Do—or Cobra Kai as the case may be—Dojos weren’t propounding deck sanding and fence painting as part of their curriculum. There are many different styles of Karate. Fans wondered which style Daniel and Johnny were really doing. Now that Netflix has picked up Cobra Kai from YouTube Red, a whole new crop of fans has discovered the show and the question has come up again: What type of Karate do they practice…
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Cobra Kai and the Legacy of The Karate Kid

Since Netflix picked up Cobra Kai it’s been sweeping up viewership like Johnny on Daniel-san’s leg. When The Karate Kid debuted in 1984, it was a smash hit, delivering returns of $100 million on a modest budget of $8 million. It also earned Best Supporting Actor nominations for the late Pat Morita (Mr Miyagi) from both the Oscars and the Golden Globes. Miyagi was a crowning achievement for Morita whose career spanned 175 roles beginning in 1964.  The Karate Kid was embraced by pop culture, redefining the martial arts genre. It had a profound effect on the practice of martial…
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