After nearly 40 years, a first season on YouTube Red (remember that?), and a Netflix revival later the story of Cobra Kai is coming to its endgame in Cobra Kai Season 6: Part 3. This soapy little nostalgic drama wasn’t always great, but it always had heart and this final stretch of episodes is everything fans could ask for in one of the more satisfying series finales in a long while.
My opinion still stands that splitting the final season into three parts was a mistake and put undue pressure on the early episodes of a backloaded season to keep the viewers’ attention. But if you’re reading this now, none of that matters because you’ve made it to the end. Thankfully, your patience will be rewarded with your final watch, which will almost assuredly turn into a binge of all five of these action-packed, emotional episodes.
Miyagi-Do, Cobra Kai, and Iron Dragons find their teams scattered directionless and sent home after the shocking death of a combatant in the Sekai Taikai. When Terry Silver returns with new secrets and mysterious motivations, the Sekai Taikai is re-instated and the future of all the teams’ competitors hang in the balance of the tournaments results.
While Cobra Kai Season 6: Part 3 does give viewers a marginal amount of time to process and catch their breath from the Part 2 finale, the episodes have little fat to trim and quickly returns to the Sekai Taikai tournament. Like an aggressive chess gambit, the show briskly moves its core cast into the forefront and begins moving the pieces toward their final destinations.
The most impressive thing this last run is how nearly all characters present from the first episode of the series are given a “fist pumping” triumph moment and a proper spotlight/sendoff before moving on to pay service to the next – some with unexpected results. The young cast excels, especially the ones that started it all, Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) and Robby (Tanner Buchanan) who overcome demons that have been haunting them the entire series.
As was the case at the beginning of Cobra Kai, the show lives and dies by how well the dual protagonists of Johnny (William Zabka) and Daniel (Ralph Macchio) are presented and here they are exceptional. There are some wonderful surprises with both characters and Macchio and Zabka are just superb. One late scene features a performance by Zabka and Kreese (Martin Kove) in which Johnny finally releases all of his pent up hurt, pain, and frustration that he’s endured over the years and Zabka is fantastic. I didn’t know the actor had it in him and it’s truly a career highlight performance.
Despite the high praise, not everything is perfect. The B-plot with Daniel investigating Mr. Miyagi’s potentially dark history with Sekai Taikai continues to be drawn out and convoluted. The payoff ties well into the themes of the epilogue, but it was a rough road getting to that moment. Also, the deus ex machina that allows for the big finale twist is an eye-rolling stretch even for this series. All is forgiven though, because where it allows the story to go is well worth the goofy explanation.
Cobra Kai Season 6: Part 3 comes to a close firing on all cylinders and will leave audiences with a big smile on their faces. The final run of episodes are full of the everything that made the show addicting – soap opera twists, nostalgic throwbacks, and even features some of the best karate choreography of the series. The creative team of executive Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg somehow managed to find emotionally rewarding endings for nearly all the enormous cast of characters and their history, ensuring Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do never die in the hearts of fans.
Score: 4 out 5