'Cobra Kai' Season Three Will Connect Back to 'The Karate Kid II'

Brady Langmann
·4 min read
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From Esquire

We needed something good to happen. We really, truly, seriously, honest-to-God needed it. Friends: Miguel lives.

He's even going to concerts, apparently! On Wednesday afternoon, we got a kick to the heart from the team behind Cobra Kai. After only giving a brief tease and a Season Four confirmation in October, Netflix dropped an extended look at Season Three. And... wow. Miguel lives, Johnny and Daniel team up at long last, and Robbie gets in a prison fight? Good to see that 2021 is picking up 2020's chaotic baton.

But rest assured, balance has been restored. The spirit of The Karate Kid series, clearly, is alive and well again, thanks to its sequel TV series, Cobra Kai. The two seasons of the show, which originally aired on YouTube Red, pick up with Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence decades after they duked it out in the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament. The sorta-reboot (a la Creed) debuted in 2018 was a surprise success, although its viewership was slightly limited, with non-YouTube Red subscribers missing out on the action.

Now? The whole damn thing is on Netflix, with Season Three officially not too far off. And it’ll see Ralph Macchio actually set foot in Okinawa, like actual Okinawa this time. (Go ahead and Google that piece of bar trivia if you're a Karate Kid superfan). But we’ll get to that. Tie up your hachimaki—we’re about to run down everything we know about Season Three of Cobra Kai so far.

When will Season Three of Cobra Kai release?

You’re in one of two camps. One, the loyal-as-hell Cobra Kai fans who watched the show in 2018 and 2019, a.k.a. the YouTube Red days. The other? The group who gleefully got the whole thing at once this summer. If you’re in the latter, congrats—you don’t have to wait as long for Season Three. It'll drop on January 8, 2020.

What is Season Three of Cobra Kai about?

Well, hopefully, Season Three will end on a slightly more positive note than Season Two ended on. Because that really wasn’t fun. Lawrence basically got swindled by Kreese, losing his gym and students. And LaRusso had just about lost his family after everything that went down in the last couple episodes. Regardless? It seems like everyone needed a change of scenery.

And that’s exactly what we’ll get in Season Three. Hurwitz confirmed that Season Three (at least partially) filmed in Okinawa, marking Macchio’s first trip there. So what will Danny be up to? Whatever it is, things don’t look too good. Judging by the full-length Season Three trailer, that's definitely the case, meaning we might learn a new secret about the legendary Mr. Miyagi.

Oh. And there’s one more fairly important cliffhanger to sort out here. Near the end of Season Two, Robby kicks Miguel down a flight of stairs—hurting him so severely that he was on life support when we last saw him. So what will his ultimate fate be? Well, if you dig far back in the Twitter archives of Xolo Maridueña, who plays Miguel in Cobra Kai, you’ll see that Miguel will definitely make an appearance in the new season. The way Maridueña is talking, it sounds like his involvement was fairly significant. December's trailer, thank Mr. Miyagi, confirms that Miguel will live to fight another day. There's also a very good chance that Elisabeth Shue will return as the former love interest Ali, given all the hints writers have dropped throughout the series.

We’ll see when Season Three picks up. In the meantime? Listen to William Zabka, who plays Johnny Lawrence himself in Cobra Kai, who says that Season Three will up the ante from the first two seasons, just in time to reach its newfound Netflix audience.

"The end of Season Two is a car wreck essentially,” Zabka said. “There's a lot of pieces to put back together. There's a lot of healing that has to happen. There's a lot of growing that needs to happen. I've seen a lot of fan theories out there, and heard a lot of fan theories. Nice tries. It's awesome. I mean, Season Three is fireworks. And I think it's Season One and Two combined on steroids."

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