A sequel thirty-four years later
Cobra Kai is a sequel to The Karate Kid, a film from 1984 in which a bullied teenager, DANIEL LARUSSO, learns karate from a wise handyman, Mr MIYAGI, and beats the star pupil of a ruthless DOJO, JOHNNY LAWRENCE, at the All Valley karate TOURNAMENT with a last-second CRANE KICK. In 2018, thirty-four years later, the same two actors, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka, returned as grown men in a series that tells the story partly from Johnny's side, showing him as a down-on-his-luck man who reopens the Cobra Kai dojo.
Three writers who had grown up loving the film pitched the idea, and it began on YouTube's paid service before moving to Netflix in 2020, where it became a huge hit with families who watched the old films together. It ended in 2025 after six series.
Wax on, wax off
The film's writer, Robert Mark Kamen, drew on his own life: he was beaten up as a teenager and took up karate afterwards. He named Mr Miyagi after Chojun Miyagi, a real karate master from Okinawa who founded one of the main styles in the 1930s. Real KARATE comes from that island, as our martial arts page explains, and the crane kick was dreamed up for the film rather than taken from a traditional karate form.
Miyagi's famous training method was to make Daniel do chores, waxing cars, painting fences and sanding floors, with particular movements, wax on, wax off, which turned out to be blocks. Pat Morita, who played Miyagi, was nominated for an Oscar for the part. He died in 2005, so in Cobra Kai the character appears through old film clips and memories, and in the tiny bonsai trees that Daniel, now running a car showroom, hands out to his customers.
Strike first, strike hard, no mercy
The COBRA KAI motto, STRIKE first, strike hard, no MERCY, taught by its old SENSEI, John KREESE, is the opposite of Miyagi's lesson that karate is for defence only. The series reveals that Johnny, the bully of the film, grew up with a cruel stepfather and a teacher who pushed him to win at any cost, and asks whether he was ever really the villain. When Kreese takes Cobra Kai back from him, Johnny starts a rival dojo of his own, Eagle Fang Karate. The series was filmed mostly in Atlanta, Georgia, though it is set in Los Angeles's San Fernando VALLEY.
Much of it follows teenagers: MIGUEL, Johnny's first student; ROBBY, Johnny's son, who trains with Daniel; SAMANTHA, Daniel's daughter; TORY, a fierce fighter; DEMETRI, a nerdy boy who toughens up; AISHA; and HAWK, who reinvents himself with a mohawk. The show gives almost every character a reason to be on either side, so viewers keep changing their minds about who the hero is. Its jokes about the 1980s, with Johnny baffled by smartphones and the internet, are among its most loved moments.
Its fights, filmed with real martial arts choreography, are the show's biggest draw. A new Karate Kid film in 2025 brought Daniel together with the kung fu teacher from the 2010 remake, played by Jackie Chan.