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Spoiler alert: This piece discusses the final season of Cobra Kai.
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At last, Cobra Kai has come to an end. Over six wild seasons, creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg managed to deliver something far more fun and more ridiculous than most imagined possible for a Karate Kid sequel: an unapologetically nostalgic reunion of countless cast members from the 1980s original franchise, combined with a new crop of karate kids to pass Mr. Miyagi’s legacy on to the next generation.
For the most part, the show has stayed consistently and improbably entertaining, even if some would say it outstayed its welcome by lasting this long. In many ways, the stakes are higher than ever in this last leg of the journey, a season split across three batches of five episodes broadly structured around the Sekai Taikai world karate tournament in Spain—a tournament relocated to the San Fernando Valley a month later after a Korean competitor named Kwon (played by Brandon H. Lee) dies.
So how did Cobra Kai pick up from that cliffhanger in Barcelona and send off its cast of adult and teenage fighters in the final batch of episodes that dropped this week? Let’s go through each character, one by one.
Johnny Lawrence
This whole show is built around a grown-up version of the teen villain from the original Karate Kid, someone whose life went downhill the moment he lost that All Valley tournament against a rookie named Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). In the final stretch of the show, the now adult Johnny (William Zabka) is still working on moving on from his fear of being eternally viewed as a loser. That includes a pair of surprisingly cathartic conversations between him and John Kreese (Martin Kove), the sensei whose verbal and even physical abuse kicked off his slide into self-loathing and eventually alcoholism after that loss in 1984. Through their tentative reconciliation, Johnny is finally able to move on mentally, especially when Kreese helps him regain control of the Cobra Kai karate dojo to face off against the rival Iron Dragons in the Sekai Taikai finals.
Because the two teams’ point totals are tied after the students compete, Johnny is put in an unexpected position: He must fight the younger, stronger Sensei Wolf in a tiebreaker round. By listening to Daniel’s pep talks and remembering his lessons, he’s able to balance his offensive Cobra Kai tactics and his defensive Miyagi-Do skills, pulling off the win for his dojo. It’s an expected but triumphant conclusion for the show’s unlikely underdog, and his ultimate happy ending—buying a house for his family and running a Cobra Kai dojo in conjunction with Daniel’s Miyagi-Do dojo—feels totally deserved.
Daniel LaRusso
The majority of Daniel’s psychological roadblocks this season revolved around the revelations about his old sensei: Not only did Mr. Miyagi once rob and assault a man, but he accidentally killed a competitor in the Sekai Taikai. This temporarily upended Daniel’s understanding of his famously pacifist mentor, but a dream conversation with Miyagi (with some slightly distasteful AI replacing the late Pat Morita) and some new info about the robbery—he was acting in self-defense while looking for the necklace stolen by an internment camp guard from Miyagi’s late wife—allows him to move on and return to the real meaning of Miyagi-Do.
At this stage in the tournament, team Miyagi-Do is too far behind on points to plausibly catch up and win as a dojo, but Daniel’s newfound inner peace helps him accept that loss and move on to support Johnny at Cobra Kai. Just like it’s always gratifying to see Johnny apply Daniel’s (and Miyagi’s) lessons, it’s also fun to watch Daniel take on Cobra Kai values. He even says the phrase “Cobra Kai never dies” this season, which the old Daniel would never do. Oh, and it’d be wrong not to mention Daniel’s wife Amanda (Courtney Henggeler), still a charming secret weapon in keeping the show grounded in these episodes.
Miguel Diaz
All hail the new boys’ world champion of karate. Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) may have lost the Miyagi-Do captain spot to Robby (Tanner Buchanan) for the Sekai Taikai, but in the final episodes, he gets the opportunity to redeem himself by stepping in to replace Kwon on the Cobra Kai squad, once again overseen by his longtime sensei, Johnny. That offers some nostalgic parallels to his All Valley win for Cobra Kai in the Season 1 finale, though Axel from the Iron Dragons is a formidable opponent who’s willing to play dirty. But Miguel pulls off the win, and later that same day he gets the news of his acceptance to Stanford.
Samantha LaRusso
Exploring Barcelona in the previous stretch of episodes made Sam (Mary Mouser) discover a real desire to get out of her comfort zone and spend more time away from the Valley. In the last episodes, she decides on a one-year program in Okinawa, inspired by her dad’s stories about that time in his life, and this time her boyfriend, Miguel, is mature enough to unequivocally support her. He’s even coming along for the first few weeks. When it comes to the Sekai Taikai, Sam makes the decision to step down and let Tory (Peyton List) go to the finals, a satisfying payoff to their seasons-long enemies-to-friends arc.
Robby Keene
When Robby was chosen as a Miyagi-Do captain for the Sekai Taikai, it seemed like this might finally be his time to shine. But when he comes back for the boys’ semifinals a month after the tournament paused, Axel’s sensei is unwilling to accept a loss—so the villainous Axel straight-up breaks Robby’s leg there on the mat, somehow winning and avoiding disqualification. Robby’s dreams of winning are dashed, which actually allows for a pretty thoughtful moment of reflection. Besides, in the end he has everything that matters: a family, friends, a girlfriend who loves him, and even an opportunity to compete professionally, despite the warnings of his skeptical guidance counselor.
Tory Nichols
After losing her mom during tryouts for the Sekai Taikai lineup, Tory isolated herself from everyone outside the strangely comforting familiarity of Cobra Kai. Now she has her friends back in her life, especially Sam. In the girls’ final, Tory faces off against Zara from the Iron Dragons, a secretly vicious but publicly beloved karate influencer, but overcomes her taunts when Robby says “I love you” and they kiss very publicly, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd. From there, Tory easily crushes Zara, even knocking one of her teeth out and saying, “Welcome to the Valley, bitch” to echo Zara’s jab back in Barcelona. Sweet justice—and Tory even gets offered brand deals that would allow her and Robby to both fight competitively.
Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz and Demetri Alexopoulos
The self-styled “Binary Bros” spent most of the first two thirds of this season in a funk, locked in a petty fight revolving around college plans. But by the end of their trip to Barcelona for the Sekai Taikai in Season 6’s second installment, they’d made up, and by now they’re back in bromance mode. When Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) gets into Caltech, they immediately start making plans to visit each other and take summer classes together—then Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) decides he’s not interested in MIT after all, and he’d rather go to Caltech with his best buddy (and, you know, their robotics program).
On a slightly less interesting note, Demetri’s girlfriend Yasmine eventually takes him back after that awkward moment when she spotted him, via FaceTime, dancing with a Spanish girl. That means that like the other graduates, both Demetri and Eli are still with their respective girlfriends going into college. It’s all sticking with the show’s slightly-over-the-top series of happy endings, though this is the type of show where a little fantasy is understandable.
John Kreese
Who saw a Kreese redemption arc coming? After escaping from prison and joining Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hanah-Kim) to hone some killers out of Cobra Kai students for the Sekai Taikai, Kreese finally expressed some interest in making real amends with Johnny, especially after Johnny saved his life from Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) during the chaos in Barcelona. He sincerely apologizes to his old student and recognizes that the love he has for Johnny is a strength rather than a weakness—but he’s also still determined to kill Silver no matter what, especially at any sign that he’s screwing with Johnny’s life, so he stows away on his yacht and blows it up with them both on it, with “mercy” as his last line instead of his customary “no mercy.”
Terry Silver
The death of this other longtime Karate Kid villain was coming either way; early in the final episodes, Silver learns that he’s terminally ill and has six months at most to live. His last doomed efforts to win glory with his dojo at the Sekai Taikai come from an effort to solidify his legacy, but Kreese stops him before he can even see the grand finale. Their fight to the death is exciting and funny, capped off with an especially over-the-top explosion.
Kenny Payne, Devon Lee, and Anthony LaRusso
The younger second-stringers hardly got any screen time in these last episodes, mostly because they dealt with the majority of their drama in the last batch, shenanigans involving spiking water with laxatives. It might’ve been nice to check in with them once or twice more, but the show does confirm that they’re still training with both Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do at the end of the series.
Chozen and Kim Da-Eun
In Barcelona, Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) unexpectedly connected with the first woman to successfully distract him from his heartbreak over Kumiko: Kim Da-Eun, the notorious and slightly abusive sensei for Cobra Kai originally brought on by Silver. And while she only appears significantly in one episode from the final five, the finale shows a glimpse of Chozen showing up to her dojang, implying the two end up together.
