Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 1 Review and Breakdown

Cobra Kai has entered its final season, which has been broken up into three parts. The first part was released on July 18, 2024. The second part will launch in November and the third and final part will launch sometime in 2025.

It’s peaceful in the valley, but not for long

The last season ended on a high note, with Terry Silver defeated and the senseis put into place after yet another fight that revolved around them.

Instead, the teams are invited to participate in the biggest karate tournament in the world: Sekai Taikai. It is invite-only and following the demise of Cobra Kai, Eagle Fang Karate, and Miyagi Do fuse and has Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence work together and prepare the students for the tournament. Of course, things never go smoothly.

Cobra Kai Season 6 has different dynamics

With the rivalry between Cobra Kai and Miyagi Do gone and the students now all working together under one big banner, the time of relative peace has dawned on the valley. People who were once enemies are now friends.

OMG! They killed Kenny!

In the first couple of episodes, Robbie, Miguel, Tory, and Samantha try to win back Kenny, who got hit hard in the previous season. Robbie apologizes but Kenny wants none of it.

I can understand that. In the previous season, Kenny started as a happy kid but as he got bullied, he was driven to Cobra Kai who taught him how to hate and channel that hate into beating up the opponents.

When Cobra Kai fell, Kenny was lost, and he wanted nothing to do with Miyagi Do. I can imagine that taking a blow right into something where you poured your heart and soul in makes you want to have nothing to do with that world. Kenny is no different, I found it very relatable.

Kenny eventually joins after his brother advises him to. He is a valuable member of the new Miyagi-Do.

Tory and Samantha are besties

The last fight versus Terry Silver’s Dojo has brought Tory and Samantha closer together. I found that very weird because, in all the seasons, they were rivals, and not just any rivals but pretty toxic rivals. Not just over boyfriends but a completely different view on life.

When the girls train, they are afraid to hurt one another and thus keep holding back. Until Johnny invites them over for a slumber party. Johnny tries to get the rivalry going again to get the best out of their karate. Yes, I found those scenes pretty toxic too from Johnny, however well intended it is from him.

Eventually, the girls confront each other with the issues that held back their karate. And it was a pretty tearful conversation.

After that, the girls were at peace and their rivalry turned healthy which was shown in the episodes after that where they both didn’t hold back but amicably sparred.

Daniel LaRusso and Johnny are back at it

LaRusso and Lawrence initially get along well but the differences in terms of character become apparent when there are problems that need solving. While Daniel grabs back to the zen teachings of Miyagi.

Johnny is more brash but if you think that Daniel is always right then you are wrong. Johnny can relate very well to some of the students who share the same background as he does. For instance, take Tory, who uses her karate to work through her issues and can get pretty aggressive.

Daniel wanted Zen while Johnny was right and should let her do her thing to work through her issue.

It is not for lack of trying from both sides. Johnny does try the Miyagi Do way. And Daniel tries his utmost best to help Johnny. Like having him work at LaRusso’s car dealership.

Sometimes, characters just don’t match and it will explode. And this is the case after the fight for the captaincy for the Sekai Taikai tournament. Johnny gets so angry that he tells Daniel that he will do the tournament but after that, they are done.

College looms for some Miyagi Do students

One of the themes in season 6, is the fact that the students are picking a college. This is also where the show hits home for many US viewers. The kids get accepted at the Ivy League or elite colleges.

The spot that hits home is the financials. Not every family can afford their kids to attend an expensive college. It hits especially hard Miguel. He lives in the valley, an area typical for people with low incomes.

For Dimitry and Hawke it is a dream to be accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have dreamed about it since they were kids.

And much to their surprise, they find out that one of their former Cobra Kai enemies did get accepted into MIT. But it is a different college using the same abbreviation.

So there was a crisis averted for Dimitry in particular. As the show continues and Dimitry is still enthusiastic about going to MIT, Hawk eventually confesses that he doesn’t want to go and does not apply for MIT.

This was the cause for a schism in their friendship and you must wonder how that will play out in the 2nd and 3rd part of the season when they come out because Dimitry was accepted.

For Sam, her parents can afford for her to go to college. Daniel and Amanda run a highly successful car dealership and have enough money to afford college.

Her problem is choice. She is a straight-A student and has extracurricular activities that may land her in a more expensive college.

Tory has already figured out that she won’t get into a college because of her criminal past, and she is still on probation. Robbie has no ambitions to go to college.

The others, we don’t know. But it was interesting to see who can and who can’t afford to go to college. Or must go to a lesser college to not hit their financials too hard. Like I wrote before: This theme hits close to home for many of the viewers, I am sure.

There is a killer on the loose

In the previous season, we saw that John Kreese broke out of jail and fled the scene. He wants to revive Cobra Kai and join the Sekai Taikai tournament using Kim Da-eun’s resources.

Her father, however, refuses and only if he brings back a family heirloom, a dagger in a cave guarded by a cobra, can he take the helm of the dojo.

I know it is early in the season, but this part was the most underdeveloped plot of the first part of Cobra Kai Season 6.

We watch Kreese train the single best student they have using the Cobra Kai Mantra: strike first, strike hard, and show no mercy.

He sets him against his fellow students to make sure that Kwong is the alpha. A new version of Johnny Lawrence.

While in the cave, the cobra guard bites Kreese. He starts hallucinating about Johnny Lawrence. Kreese hates the man because he feels betrayed by him for using Miyagi’s teachings over his.

Johnny was his best student and got beaten by Daniel LaRusso many years ago. LaRusso, who barely had any training.

Who knew that this was the reason for the animosity on Kreese’s side? I never figured that out. I knew that Kreese hated Johnny, but I never figured out that this was the reason. It looks like Johnny has made an enemy for life.

Kreese does something else; he meets up with Tory who tells him that Kreese betrayed him after he went to jail and left her to rot. Kreese makes her an offer to which Tory replies that he can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

The Kreese storyline feels a bit weak and underdeveloped. It may change throughout the season but at this point, it feels like Kreese is used because there is no one else who can play the villain. And that is a shame.

After Tory’s mother passes away, Tory has a lot of pent-up anger and when Miyagi Do has to appoint captains for the teams for the tournament, she fights Samantha over it in a sparring match.

She bursts into tears when Daniel asks her to stop the fight. Her mother passed away and Daniel thinks she needs some time. After failing to connect with Tory, Tory leaves Miyagi Do and joins Kreese’s Cobra Kai revival team.

Once again, Kreese manages to manipulate a vulnerable student to do his bidding. It’s what makes Kreese so disgusting: preying on the weak!

Mr Miyagi’s dirty little secrets

When Chozen complains about the mattress at Miyagi-Do, they shove aside the bed to find a hidden compartment on the floor. Like a floor safe.

When they open it, it has all kinds of articles of a crime with another someone named Miyagi. It also had a home address. When Daniel, Chozen, and Amanda visit it, it turns out to be a boxing gym.

It turns out that Miyagi once took part in assault and robbery. The person who helped out, helped him create a new identity.

I found that surprising, to say the least, because Miyagi was like the holiest of the holiest, especially for Daniel who looked up to him and considered him to be his father. When Daniel realizes what happened, he is shaken and has been troubled ever since.

When the captains are appointed for the Sekai Taikai the captain’s headbands are handed out during a ceremony. and Daniel immediately recognizes the logo.

He runs into the house to find the box that was found earlier and sees that Miyagi also participated in the Sekai Taikai tournament.

Miyagi’s headband is covered in a lot of dried-up blood. It raises a lot of questions about Miyagi’s past.

In the previous seasons, we saw that the residents of Okinawa developed karate techniques that were designed to kill an opponent. Of course, this was developed for self-defense.

But using it in one of the biggest tournaments where the rules are sometimes merely a suggestion and the amount of blood that was on the headband, as well as the newspaper article, it could very well have been that Miyagi may have killed during the tournament or at least severely wounded up to wounding an opponent to the brink of death. I am looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Mike Barnes picks the Sekai Taikai tournament team

The students train hard for the Sekai Taikai tournament and throughout the show, they make you believe that the entire dojo is allowed to enter. When the tournament organizers send out a video, it turns out that only six members of the dojo are allowed to enter.

This calls for a mini-tournament and the six who win will represent Miyagi Do at the Sekai Taikai tournament.

Mike Barnes referees the tournament. Mike is just as tough as he was in Karate Kid Part 3 but less mean.

He still has that killer instinct and trains the students to have at least a little bit of that. Mike is also a bit of a brag since he was a national karate champion whereas Johnny and Danny were just regional.

This all by itself means nothing. Of course, there is male brawling over who is the best and who isn’t. Eventually, Mike is put in place by Johnny when they fight in Mike’s silo and Johnny wins the fight.

This marks again what Kreese said earlier during his hallucination that Johnny is the best he has ever trained.

The tournament is won by Tory, Dimitry, Samantha, Robbie, Miguel, and Devon. Although Devon cheated when she put a laxative in Kenny’s drink making him run back for an acute case of diarrhea. With that action, Devon puts the team at risk as Kenny is the better fighter.

Tory leaves the team after her mother passes away and Hawk is her replacement. When the team arrives in Barcelona, Spain, they find Tory in the Cobra Kai team. Once again, the betrayal is real but both sides feel betrayed by one another. Whatever happened to talking as a team?

Personal thoughts about Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 1

The first part of the three-part installment of Cobra Kai season 6 is amazing so far, despite the few gripes I have with some parts of the story

The story picks up quickly after the events of season 5. I do have some thoughts about some of the plotlines.

I loved Chozen in season 5 but in season 6, he is just sitting around a bit. Watching TV, trying to acclimatize to American life. He watches a lot of Real Estate TV shows but overall, it just felt a bit useless to have him sit around.

The pivotal role he played in the show was the finding of the box of memories of Mr. Miyagi. After that, he is shipped off back to Okinawa in hopes of finding Kumiko and to find out why she never replied to his text. Which is also the cause of his lovesickness.

I mentioned before that I wasn’t so fond of the idea of Kreese once again reviving Cobra Kai. They should rename Cobra Kai to Hydra, cut off one head and two will return.

This is the case in Cobra Kai season 6 as well. With the help of Kim and her students, Kreese reemerges as the new sensei.

The backstory of Kim and her father feels a bit thin overall and while the flashbacks did help develop the characters a bit, they are both very two-dimensional characters. The same goes for Kwong, the top student of Cobra Kai. They are all mere plot devices.

Overall, I am looking forward to the second installment of the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai. The second part is slated to premiere on November 15, 2024. And the final part of the sixth season is slated to be released sometime in 2025. That date remains unknown at the time of this publication.