Cobra Kai finale - my thoughts and review

I originally planned to write this review after watching the first two episodes of the final season. The last part of Season 6 started off strong, but I held off until I had seen the whole thing. And I’m glad I did—because those final five episodes sum up Cobra Kai perfectly: a solid beginning, a gradual shift into chaos, and in the end, it was always about Johnny and Daniel.

Now I know this is Reddit, where people have strong opinions, but no one around me wants to talk about Cobra Kai, so I’m doing it here. 

Let’s have a real discussion because downvotes are for pussies.

The Good
Like a lot of people who grew up in the ’90s, The Karate Kid was part of my childhood. When Cobra Kai first dropped on YouTube, I was hooked on the premise—flipping the perspective, making Johnny Lawrence the focus, and calling it Cobra Kai instead of The Karate Kid. It was a fresh take, and those first two seasons were genuinely great.

The show thrived on nostalgia, bringing back key characters and unpacking their old wounds. Sure, some things didn’t quite add up—like how losing to Daniel supposedly ruined Johnny’s entire life, or how he seemed completely unaware of the modern world—but it worked because it was fun, well-paced, and had heart.

Where Cobra Kai Went Wrong

By the end of Season 2, the cracks started showing. The show fell into the same trap as a lot of long-running series: refusing to let characters grow or let them go. Instead of bringing in fresh conflicts rooted in the past, it just kept recycling the same ones. Dojos changed hands. Rivalries flipped. But nothing really evolved. The stakes kept getting higher, but there were never real consequences.

The first two Karate Kid movies are the Karate Kid movies. Classic. The third one, though, was a full-on parody of what came before. It cranked up the villains to such an insane degree, making The Karate Kid Part III the weakest film in the trilogy. In Cobra Kai, instead of pulling from the magic of the first two films, they leaned into the mess of the third one and doubled down. Silver was already a cartoon villain in the ’80s, a millionaire obsessed with ruining a teenager’s life. Instead of replacing him, the show just cranked the absurdity up to 11. Supposedly rehabilitated and moved on? Nope. One mention of "karate," and he’s right back to his old ways, burning through his fortune to settle a decades-old grudge.

Strike Fast, Strike Hard, No Consequences

In Cobra Kai’s version of reality, no matter how badly you screw up, the fallout never lasts. Whether you paralyze someone, get paralyzed yourself, destroy a house, or burn down a business, it’s all forgotten within two episodes and the police are never there. Meanwhile, Daniel, Johnny, Kreese and Silver spend six seasons fixated on events from 35 years ago.

Karate or MMA?

The fights in Cobra Kai started as grounded karate, but over time, they morphed into something closer to a live-action anime. What was once a mix of traditional karate with a bit of street brawling turned into high-flying, wire-fu chaos where the laws of physics—and basic human endurance—no longer applied.
Miguel was paralyzed at the end of Season 2, only to make a near-miraculous recovery after a few pep talks and a Motley Crüe-fueled training montage. Characters got slammed through glass tables, thrown off balconies, and hurled into walls with enough force to cause permanent damage—yet they’d be back in the dojo the next day like nothing happened. By the 4th season, the show had abandoned even the pretense of realism, with kids and senior citizens alike taking part in full-contact, no-holds-barred battles as if they were in a Mortal Kombat tournament.

The Stingray Effect

The comedy started as a clever counterbalance to the melodrama, allowing the show to have fun without losing its emotional core. But as the seasons dragged on, the humor stopped working with the story and started working against it. Instead of adding self-awareness, it made serious moments feel like they belonged in a bad sitcom.

Take Stingray, for example. A mid-30s man training and hanging out with teenagers. He might be seen off as a quirky side character—a past-his-prime man-child trying to live out his teenage fantasy. By the time he became a key player in major plotlines, he felt less like a character and more like a recurring joke the writers refused to retire. And he wasn’t the only one.
Chozen, who had a beautiful character arc closure in his early appearances in Cobra Kai, was a victim of the show’s need to keep pushing its wacky humor, turning his once-intense presence into something comically absurd.

Unlike them, Elisabeth Shue as Ali Mills and Tamlyn Tomita as Kumiko were fantastic, keeping their characters intact—probably because they had limited screen time, and the showrunners and scriptwriters didn’t have enough time to mess them up.

The slapstick gags, the one-liners, the wacky side characters—they piled up until Cobra Kai felt less like the scrappy underdog show it started as and more like an SNL parody of itself. The show wanted to have it both ways, balancing high-stakes karate battles with goofy comedy, but instead of blending the two, it just whiplashed between them. By the later seasons, it wasn’t just over-the-top—it was practically winking at the audience, daring us to take any of it seriously.

Sekai Taikai

Sekai Taikai, the so-called world tournament that was supposed to be the grand culmination of every rivalry, every redemption arc, every high-flying kick that came before it. Instead, it felt like the show cranked the dial past Cobra Kai and straight into Squid Game, minus the actual stakes. The rules made no sense. The matchups were absurd. It wasn’t a tournament—it was a montage of flashy fight scenes stitched together with just enough dialogue to remind us why the characters were still mad at each other.

By that point, realism had completely left the dojo. The show had gone from backyard karate brawls to a global competition where a bunch of high schoolers were somehow world-class fighters. The original appeal of Cobra Kai was watching underdogs train, struggle, and fight for something real. Now, we had kids pulling off wire-fu stunts in a tournament that felt more like an overproduced reality show. The stakes had never been lower, yet the show kept insisting it was bigger than ever.

Production Value

In terms of cinematography, music, and production design, Cobra Kai seemed to put most of its effort into the first two seasons. But once it found a new home on Netflix, instead of ramping up production, the show gradually took a step backward.

Even on a technical level, Cobra Kai never quite lived up to the hype. Filmed on high-end Sony Venice cameras and used Panavision Primo Lenses all the right tools to get that glorious cinematic look, somehow the image looked like a classic television, like a show you’d catch on a Wednesday night, not the high-profile Netflix series it was meant to be. Those flashbacks to the '80s and '60s? They looked like cheap plastic, oddly flat for something that likely had a budget between $2-3 million an episode—comparable to Breaking Bad's hefty production costs, no less.

The AI/CGI recreations of Mr Miyagi were horrifying, and I am sure I’ll have some nightmares about it later on (or some funny memes).

The music 

The Karate Kid films had an iconic, instantly recognizable sound—those classic '80s tracks that brought weight and urgency to the story. Cobra Kai, however, especially in its later seasons, sounded like someone plugged “epic karate fight music” into an AI generator. It’s hollow. It’s soulless. The soundtrack doesn’t build any tension—it drains it.

And the final tournament? A visual disaster. Gone was the energy of the epic open sport arena shot in broad daylight in the All Valley tournament.

Instead, we got a dimly lit studio bathed in neon lights, creating a sterile, lifeless atmosphere. The crowd? Barely there. The stakes? Barely felt. It didn’t have the intensity of a climactic event—it felt more like an off-Broadway play with half-empty seats—small and cheap.

The Ending: Too Little, Too Late

To be fair, the final episodes had some strong moments. They dialed back the insanity and focused on emotional payoffs for Johnny and Daniel. For the first time in a while, the show felt grounded again. But that only made things more frustrating—because it proved they could have done this all along. Instead, they wasted multiple seasons on nonsense, over-the-top villains, and recycled conflicts.

And then they rushed the ending. Tournament rules changed last minute. Dojos switched teams on a whim. Kreese and Silver got absurd send-offs, and nobody even acknowledged it. It was all just a sprint to the finish line.

Final Thoughts

For all its flaws, Cobra Kai still had heart. That heart came from The Karate Kid, and no matter how much Netflix stretched it, that core connection was always there. That’s why the last scene with Daniel and Johnny showed that it was about them all along, and that's why despite everything, I kept watching.

Personally, watching Cobra Kai has always been a mix of emotions. On one hand, it’s a series with so many issues, and I probably wouldn’t have watched it if it weren’t feeling attached to The Karate Kid. On the other hand, the creators knew exactly where to pull the nostalgia strings and stick them right in the heart. There was always a cameo that hit the mark, a quote, or a sample from the legendary Bill Conti soundtrack.

I actually communicated a bit with Jon Hurwitz on Twitter in earlier seasons. If I could ask him today one thing, it would be: What was the master plan from the very beginning, and when did it

Because while Cobra Kai started and ended in the right place, everything in between was a mess. It could’ve been tighter. It could’ve been smarter. But they got lost in the noise.

Right after finishing Cobra Kai, I saw the trailer for The Karate Kid: Legends. And for the first time in a while, I felt excited again. The cinematography looked cinematic. The music had weight. Ralph Macchio’s performance felt more natural. It’s set three years after Cobra Kai, which gives it some distance. And I’m genuinely curious to see what they do with it.

Still, we got 65 episodes of Cobra Kai with Ralph Macchio and William Zabka—who, for the most part, took their roles seriously and carried the show on their backs.

Anyway, this review is probably too long for Reddit. But if you made it this far, let me know what you think.