Fridge / Cobra Kai

Fridge Brilliance

General

• Johnny's cars:
  • 1991 Pontiac Firebird — The hallmark "firebird" is the mythological phoenix, which is known to symbolize rebirth. The vehicle itself is also a perfect metaphor for Johnny: a gorgeous piece of 1980s American automotive engineering, and something that was incredibly cool 30 years ago (a well-maintained car of this type can command a very high price). But the car is clearly at the point of breaking down, though a combination of age and poor maintenance. Just like Johnny, it's a relic of a time when it was admired, but now just seems old and out of place. And speaking of the phoenix metaphor, Louie LaRusso and his biker buddies eventually set the car on fire, which is what a phoenix would do to die and become reborn.
  • 2009 Dodge Challenger — "Challenger" needs no elaboration. The 3rd generation Challengers were also designed to emulate 70s and 80s muscle cars for a vintage yet modern style. Johnny's interactions with his students (especially Miguel) are starting to bring him into the modern age, but he still stays rooted in the culture of the 80's.
  • 1993 Dodge Grand Caravan — A destitute Johnny takes unofficial ownership of this van early in Season 3 after essentially losing everything at the end of Season 2. However, Season 3 sees Johnny reconcile with Miguel and his family, given closure on his past relationship with Ali, make peace with Daniel (at least one that doesn't get mucked up by the end of the season), and even starts a relationship with Miguel's mother Carmen. Johnny is probably more humbled than he's ever been and with the potential prospect of becoming an actual family man, driving around in an old station wagon suddenly doesn't seem too unfitting for him.
• Cobra Kai in general is a highly unorthodox Karate school, with almost no use of belt ranks, low emphasis on kata (the only time we see one is in The Karate Kid Part III, when we spot Terry Silver training in one. And he's quite vocal about them being of little use), and great use of board and brick breaking exercises and sparring. This makes much more sense when it's revealed in the third season episode "King Cobra" that Cobra Kai Karate is actually a form of Tang Soo Do, which Captain Turner learned during the Korean War and in turn taught to Kreese during the Vietnam War. Cobra Kai uses lots of high kicks more common in Korean styles, Johnny uses commands in Korean when training his students, and Terry Silver mentions a South Korean master and his "kata" is actually a variation on the Koryo Hyung found in Taekwondo. As for why it's called Karate rather than Tang Soo Do, even now, Karate actually is now a broad term that encompasses many different martial arts disciplines with a common lineage dating back to Okinawa, but also drawing on other martial arts (Wado-Ryu in fact draws heavily from Shindo Yoshin-Ryu Jujitsu, owing to the founder having trained in it before joining Shotokan), so it's likely Kreese decided that the (disputed) Karate lineage of the Korean martial arts he learned meant they were in the end Korean Karate (and Taekwondo and Tang-Soo-Do are indeed called just that in certain circles). That or Kreese and Silver don't see any point in distinguishing between different Asian martial arts.
  • Another unusual thing of Cobra Kai, that they actually share with Miyagi-do, is that they use grappling and throwing moves and, at least the teachers, even traditional weapons, when Karate styles are normally bare-handed striking only, but there's good reasons for it: Miyagi-do is an Okinawan form, possibly the earliest form of Karate, and the original Okinawan Karate had and still has grappling and throwing, and sometimes even weapons (the focus on bare-handed striking to the exclusion of the rest started only when Karate started being taught in mainland Japan, as that was what the mainlanders were interested into), something that endures to this day; as for Cobra Kai it's a style created by soldiers originally for use on the battlefield, where grappling and weapon skills would be useful, and at the time many US soldiers were taught Karate directly in Okinawa. Part of this as well came from the fact that, according to his autobiography, Gichin Funakoshi, the "Father of Modern Karate," was a friendly sparring partner of Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo; both incorporated a little of the other's style into their arts and passed it down to their students.
• Throughout the first three seasons, Sam's and Miguel's wardrobe choices have certain color patterns that define their relationship. The colors are similar to Senor Octopus, which consists of purple and red tones.
  • In Season 1, they come into play during their science lesson where Miguel takes Sam on as his and Demetri's lab partner. Miguel is wearing salmon tones and Sam is wearing lilac. Similar tones are seen when Miguel asks her out-again he is in salmon and blue tones and Sam is in a maroon top, eerily similar to what they both wear during the school brawl in season 2. When they go on their date, Miguel’s colors are extremely similar to Senor Octopus and Sam is now in pink. Their relationship then starts to deteriorate past this point.
  • In season 2, the only time these colors come back is when they’re together at the roller skating rink during 80’s night: Sam in Pink (which really suits her) and Miguel in Johnny’s red jacket.
  • During season 3, when both Sam and Miguel present their case to the panel for the All Valley tournament, Miguel is wearing a maroon shirt and Sam once again in her pink/lilac tones. During the next episode, when they kiss, Miguel is wearing red sweatpants and a gold hoodie with blue lapels, while Sam has purple tones-even her fingernails. During the house brawl in the season finale, the maroon colors from season 1 are back and it’s very similar to what Miguel wore on his date with Sam. Sam now wears a jacket with pink and maroon colors for her rematch with Tory.
• Sam's wardrobe is primarily pink based. It's her character color as noted by Mary Mouser and by costume designer Frank Helmer. But she also wears a fair number of purple/maroon/red and blue patterned clothes. As Mouser has also mentioned, that's because Sam and Miguel's romance is a bridge between the two dojos. She wears those colors whenever intimate moments are happening between her and Miguel, blue being the color of Miyagi-Do and red being the color of Johnny's Cobra Kai/Eagle Fang. Their relationship is literally the glue between the dojos, and so her wardrobe colors are the mixture of these two colors.
  • In Season 1, in the science class, Sam is wearing lilac when Miguel takes her for a lab partner. Later, when Miguel catches Sam in the hall to ask her out, she's wearing a maroon dress. Sparks are flying between them, and she's already interested in him.
  • At Moon's party in season 2, Sam wears a pink jacket over a red and blue patterned blouse. Here, she kisses Miguel after hearing that he returned Mr. Miyagi's Medal of Honor.
  • During the school fight, Sam is wearing blue jeans and a maroon top. Tory is picking a fight with Sam because she saw Sam kissing Miguel.
  • When Sam visits Miguel in the hospital, and at the speech to save the tournament, she is wearing a heart necklace. Kind of like the metaphorical wearing her heart on her sleeve.
  • When Sam comes to Miguel's side during his speech to save the All-Valley tournament, she's wearing a lilac colored jacket.
  • When Daniel walks in on Miguel and Sam kissing in the dojo, Sam is wearing all-purple workout clothes, and even her fingernails are painted purple (while Miguel is wearing maroon shorts, and a gold shirt under a yellow hoodie with blue lapels). In this scene, she convinces her dad to hear Miguel out, which ends with Daniel developing a better understanding for him.
  • In the house brawl, Sam sports a jacket with pink and maroon colors. This is right after she and Miguel have brought Eagle Fang and Miyagi-Do together.
• Sam's general appearance, both in hair and clothing, tell a story of their own beyond the above reds and purples.
  • In the first part of season 1, Sam constantly wears her hair loose and dresses up when she's hanging out with Yasmine and Moon. Her curly hair is combed perfectly, and she's always dressed like she were on her way to a job interview or a party. After she starts dating Miguel, she starts wearing regular pants, hinting that she's gotten over the popularity thing and is focused on just being herself.
    • But even when she hangs out with the rich kids, Sam tends to dress more conservatively than Moon, Yasmine, and even Tory, reflecting how she's a bit of an outsider in their clique. Tory and Hawk derogatorily call her "Princess" because she dresses modestly, refuses to drink (except when Tory pressures her in season 2), mostly keeps her head down and doesn't instigate fights in season 1. Her modesty shows that she has more innocence than Tory or Hawk.
  • In season 2, Sam is still quite fashionable, but pulls her hair back and dresses more like the average teenage girl (t-shirts, blouses, jackets), reflecting her continued focus on being more humble now that she's not focused on being one of the popular kids.
  • In season 3, Sam is not as fashionable as before. Her outfits are not as good-looking as in the previous seasons, and her hair is much messier, implying that she hasn't been taking much care of it. She looks messier and much more weary in this season, a representation of her inner emotional turmoil as a product of her PTSD.^note The unkempt hair was Mary Mouser's idea, as this is how she normally wears her hair outside of filming and she asked the makeup artists not to go through the lengthy process to style her hair. Once Daniel helps her confront her trauma, and she reconciles with Miguel, she starts to pay more attention to her hair and attire.
• In a similar fashion to Sam's and Miguel's clothing, Robby and Tory have a tendency to wear flannel shirts and ripped jeans quite a bit. The colors don't always match, but their styles do most the time. This in retrospect is visual foreshadowing towards them becoming a couple once Robby joins Cobra Kai.
• The state of Sam's relationship with Miguel is reflective of how all the students' conflicts are a trickle down of Johnny and Daniel's rivalry.
  • In a way, Johnny and Daniel turned their kids against each other like they were at war: the LaRussos on one side, Johnny and Miguel on the other. The rest of the kids fell in behind Sam and Miguel respectively.
  • A lot of the drama in season 2 is a product of the mistrust that Daniel and Johnny respectively sewed in Sam and Miguel in season 1, Daniel by having blind dislike for Cobra Kai that left Sam hesitant to reveal she was dating a Cobra Kai, and Johnny by giving Miguel a biased version of events from 1984. So instead of working together to unite the kids and keep them in check, Sam and Miguel end up on opposite sides with their dojos going at each other.
  • In season 3, within 24 hours of Sam and Miguel getting back together, they stopped the fighting between Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang. That happened at the same time Ali stopped most of the bad blood between Daniel and Johnny.
• The color of Hawk's mohawk tells you everything you need to know about his character at the time. When he initially flips the script and restyles his hair into the mohawk, it's dyed blue to show he's decided to embrace the Cobra Kai way of becoming badass, but he also has some shades of pacifism in him (blue being the color of Miyagi-Do). In Season 2, he changes the color from blue to red around the same time he has completed his transformation into a bloodthirsty bully who will even attack his friends for any perceived slights. He retains this up through the end of season 3. In Season 4, following his Heel–Face Turn, he's dyed it purple, now that he's made up with Demetri and is a member of the combined Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang. In Season 5, he shifts between multiple colors as his mohawk grows back but never stays on one for too long, even remarking that some aren't the right fit for him. While he's found some inner peace, he still has a little bit of a struggle deciding who he is as a person.
• Remember in the third movie, when Mr. Miyagi told Daniel someday, he will be doing his own style of karate, not just copying Mr. Miyagi? That's what Daniel didn't understand at first—the karate that worked for him as a teenager is not working for the next generation of teenagers, because they're not the exact same people dealing with the exact same problems. It's why, for example, Chozen and Julie both learned different moves and techniques than Daniel, despite all learning the same style. It's a principle in real life martial arts, too: Every student comes to the dojo with different needs, different abilities, and different levels of understanding, and every teacher has the responsibility to shape their lessons to fit their student's needs, rather than the other way around. Both Johnny and Daniel needed to learn that the style they learned might have worked for them, but they can't expect their students to be carbon copies of them.
• A subtle but continuous theme throughout the series is that Cobra Kai's "strike first, strike hard, no mercy" isn't actually as useful as Kreese and Silver make it out to be, as it can be countered by anyone with good enough defense. In almost every one-on-one fight between a student of Kreese and Silver's Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do or Eagle Fang, the latter is the victor as long as they're emotionally balanced and taking their opponent seriously.
  • In Season 2, as noted below, Miguel and the Miyagi-Do students are able to win the brawl by taking advantage of their opponents' anger. Earlier, Sam and Robby had been able to fend off five Cobra Kais at once at the mall, and Johnny had Kreese helpless during the fight at the beginning of the season before he backed off.
  • During the Season 3 arcade fight, the Miyagi-Do students had the upper hand until Tory turned up with reinforcements and Sam had a panic attack.
  • Again, during the house fight in Season 3 and the All-Valley in Season 4, the Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang students who win their matches often do so by exploiting weaknesses in their opponents' fighting styles, while the Cobra Kai students who win usually do so by outnumbering an individual opponent or using Miyagi-Do against them. The Cobra Kai students who advance farthest in the tournament are Robby, who originally studied Miyagi-Do, and Tory, who was the student to take his Miyagi-Do lessons most to heart. And even then, the only reason Tory won the girl's competition in the All-Valley was that the ref was bribed—Sam clearly scores two points which were discounted by the ref, and one of Tory's strikes should have cost her a point reduction.
  • In their fight at the end of Season 3, Johnny and Daniel each defeat Kreese single-handedly, only being stopped by their children.
  • When Robby attacks Johnny and spars with Silver, he's almost all offense, having lost himself to Cobra Kai. While the skill and experience gap does play a part, neither time is he able to come close to laying a finger on his opponent, who manhandles him easily (and given that Silver was just beginning to get back into karate when they fought after thirty years, Robby ought to have been able to give Silver much more of a challenge). By contrast, at the beginning of Season 4, even though he's solidly Cobra Kai his Miyagi-Do background is enough that not a single Cobra Kai student is unable to land a hit on him until he drops his guard.
  • By the end of Season 4, Kenny is now the one who's all offense, and when Robby, Eli, and Miguel take him seriously, Kenny is helpless against them. The same is true of Sam and Devon (who, again, is beginning to lose herself to Cobra Kai) during their Sekai Taikai match where Sam crushes Devon 3-1, to the point where even the bribed ref has no choice but to give Sam the victory.
  • When Johnny and Daniel first fight Silver, as noted below, Silver takes advantage of their emotional weaknesses, and in Johnny's case a surprise attack, to defeat them (and even then, both make him work for his victory, particularly Daniel). At the end of Season 5, when they're on guard and focused, Johnny's able to take on almost all of Silver's teachers single-handed despite the fact that he's incredibly drunk, only needing a little help from Mike and Chozen. Meanwhile, Daniel's second duel with Silver is a Curb-Stomp Battle on the other foot, not allowing Silver to get in any hits and taking advantage of openings to use the QuickSilver method against him.
  • Kim Da-Eun, despite decades of experience in the Way of the Fist, is equalled by two teenage girls (Sam in particular does very well against her, arguably better than Tory, though admittedly she isn't as badly injured). We're not shown the end of their fight, but clearly Devon, who only has about a year of experience, was able to, along with Tory, hold her off long enough for Anthony to broadcast the video.
  • Chozen, who is drunk at the time, is still able to not only go toe-to-toe with Silver, but flat-out defeat him.
    • Just to build off of this, Johnny's Cobra Kai in Season One did feature some defense, though he hadn't yet fully developed his style as being substantially different from Kreese's. Still, evenly matched as they were with Robby's injury, it's doubtful that Miguel would have beaten Robby if he and Hawk hadn't wounded Robby earlier, both times taking advantage of Robby playing by tournament rather than street rules.
• The gi's of the dojos reflect their fighting styles:
  • Cobra Kai has a light fabric with exposed arms and neck, and partially exposed breast. This mirrors their style of attacking instead, and often at the expense of, defense.
  • Miyagi Dojo has a thick fabric with protected arms, neck, and breast. This mirrors their style of defense instead of attack.
  • Eagle Fang has a combination of the two: A thick fabric with partially exposed neck and arms with protected breast. This mirrors their style of attack with a hint of defense.
• Although there are multiple in-universe reasons for why Sam stopped practicing karate after Mr. Miyagi died, the Doylist reason is simple. Had she continued her training for the next seven years, she would be leagues ahead of any of the other kids, and none of the Cobra Kai students would be any match for her. For there to be any drama in her fights, there had to have been time for her skills to atrophy. This also at least partially explains why the writers had him pass away at the age of 86 instead of living into his early/mid-90s and then dying just a year or two prior to the show starting.

Season 1

• While Johnny typically thinks ill of Daniel, he never speaks ill of Miyagi or approves of any negative action directed towards the Miyagi-do legacy. In season 2, he's genuinely uneasy upon learning Miyagi's Medal of Honor was stolen. This makes sense, since it was Miyagi who saved him from being choked out by Kreese in Karate Kid Part 2.
  • Daniel is the inverse, at least at first. He is all smiles when Johnny appears at his dealership, and even hugs him. "I don't blame you for what happened back in the day, all right, I know that wasn't you. It was Cobra Kai. We're all better off without it, am I right?" Johnny blamed the student, while Daniel (particularly thanks to his own experiences in the third movie) blamed the teacher.
• Throughout the series, Shannon seems to prefer when her dates act like aggressive "alpha" males. Seems like she Has a Type in karate bad boys after all... and never learned her lesson when her relationship with Johnny went sour.
• Johnny's apartment door number is 2. His life had only gone downhill since he came in second in the All-Valley Tournament 34 years ago. Meanwhile, Miguel lives in apartment 1, and he wins the tournament as Johnny's number-one student.
• Johnny's alcoholism evolves throughout the series.
  • At the beginning, Johnny was your typical destitute alcoholic whose apartment was littered with empty Coors cans that he sometimes reused in place of actual cups. By the end of season one, after his Pyrrhic Victory at the All Valley tournament he drowns his sorrows with some Jack Daniels but is using actual glassware this time, which is certainly a more dignified display compared to the beginning of the series.
  • He also switches over from cans to bottles at some point. It's not like he has no class.
• Johnny explains to Miguel to pursue the woman when she says no, and keep asking for a date. But he draws the line when she says no to anything physical. How did he learn this? When he kissed Ali at the country club and she punched him in the face. At least one lesson stuck!
  • Also, his belief that it's okay to pursue a girl even after she has said no ties in with how he reveals Ali wasn't interested in him at first but he kept asking till she said yes.
• In a first season mired in subterfuge and dickery at all age levels, Kyler's response to the sashimi is a rare refreshing display of honesty. He honestly had no clue about its cultural status.
• At the start of the second movie, Johnny got put in a choke-hold by Kreese, and it's implied to have been one of the worst moments in his life. In season 1, breaking out of a choke-hold is one of the first moves Johnny teaches Miguel.
• In the third movie, Terry Silver boasted that soon Miyagi wouldn't even be a memory and everyone would know John Kreese and Cobra Kai, and Daniel countered that people would remember Miyagi and forget Cobra Kai instead. 33 years later, Daniel is proven so right that the board of the All-Valley Tournament doesn't even remember they banned Cobra Kai and any successor dojo.
• Johnny's unorthodox lessons have a stronger basis in real life than they may appear to at first:
  • When Johnny starts teaching Miguel how to punch he insists to hit as if he actually wanted to hit someone right behind the guy he hit. This is actually a traditional Karate principle, Ikken Hissatsu, translating as "To Annihilate at One Blow". It's not really practiced in modern sport Karate for obvious reasons, but it would make sense that Cobra Kai would teach it.
  • Upon finding out many of the first wave of students flinch when confronted with the chance of being hit, Johnny has Aisha punch them in the face. A common weakness of many traditionally-taught martial arts is that they refrain from sparring due to a greater focus on the spiritual and mental aspects of the art. This can make practicioners flinch and be ineffective against someone who'd actually try and hit them, as shown in multiple occasion and most famously in a very quick fight between a Tai Chi master and a MMA practitioner. Cobra Kai, on the other hand, has always been focused on direct fighting, and under Johnny it focuses on teaching to bullying victims aiming to fight back, so he's dealing with that issue early, albeit in a somewhat unorthodox manner.
• Eli's transformation into Hawk is a Shout-Out to The Next Karate Kid. Julie rescued a hawk.
• In The Karate Kid (1984), Daniel and Mr. Miyagi had to go through a bunch of hoops, including lying and stealing a belt, in order to get him into the tournament. Robby has no problems registering at the last minute as unaffiliated. Why? Because Daniel has been on the board for the past 30 years and would have pushed for change to allow students with less traditional training to get in without all the hassle.
• Meta: in a season 1 Deleted Scene, Johnny tries to poach students from a BJJ dojo and calls it a "cheap knock-off" of Karate... Because there's a real life BJJ Cobra Kai dojo.
• Kyler seems pretty stupid when you consider that he was spreading slurs about Sam when he's seen her fight. However, not only is he enough of an arrogant jock that he no doubt thinks he can handle her, there's also the fact that, given how most schools have "zero-tolerance policies" towards fighting and the utter ineffectiveness of the staff, he probably thinks she won't be able to retaliate effectively.

Season 2

• In contrast to Johnny's willingness to give Kreese a second chance, the other original Cobra Kai members and Daniel are horrified by Johnny's decision and try to convince him that the man can't be trusted. This makes perfect sense because, thanks to his home life, Johnny had a close emotional bond with Kreese and saw him as a Parental Substitute, so he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The other members, as far as the audience knows, came from stable homes and didn't have the same emotional relationship with Kreese that Johnny did. So they were able to see the man as he truly is. While Daniel sees Kreese as putting on the same "falsely reformed" act Terry Silver put on.
• It makes sense that Daniel would immediately jump to the conclusion that Johnny was lying when he saw Kreese was alive. Terry Silver pulled the same trick on him in The Karate Kid Part III.
• Oh, the irony. Tommy, the Cobra Kai kid most famous for yelling "Get him a bodybag, yeah!" during the tournament in the original Karate Kid, dies after a long battle with disease halfway through Season 2. The last shot we see is him being put into a bodybag.
• John Kreese is a Drill Sergeant Nasty but not just by being brutal with his students. Towards the end of Episode 6, he can be heard telling his students to think of Cobra Kai as their brother and sisters and to think of themselves as one. Similar to standard military training across the world. He is a special forces veteran after all.
• During the Season 2, Miguel and Robby both attempt to discourage excessive drinking on the part of Tory and Sam, respectively. Both have experience with Alcohol-Induced Stupidity: Robby has two alcoholic parents, and Miguel accidentally hit Sam during a bender.
• Despite being far from the best student of Miyagi-Do, Demetri tends to receive many of the triumphant musical cues reminiscent of Daniel's from the original movie trilogy. While not the best student in terms of martial abilities, Demetri arguably best embodies the core lesson of the dojo when it comes to fighting: 'Fighting always last answer to problem, but if must fight, fight to win.' During the school brawl, Demetri at first tries to get outside help from the teachers. When that failed, and after being caught in Hawk's crosshairs, Demetri runs and hides until he is eventually backed into a corner. When Demetri finally has to defend himself, he does just that, simply defends and ends the confrontation quickly in a single well-placed counterstrike. From a philosophical standpoint, Demetri is (with the possible exception of Chris) the best student of Miyagi-Do.
• Kreese is a worse teacher than Johnny and not just in the Evil Mentor sense. Despite its early problems, Cobra Kai under Johnny had an excellent reputation in the valley, his business was attracting a large group of new students and his Dare to Be Badass instruction style was working wonders for his pupils' confidence and technical skills even with vicious but ultimately small missteps like the All Valley Finals. They were there for each other no matter what. Kreese's arrival and instruction marks the point where Cobra Kai starts to decline and Miyagi-Do begins growing into a legitimate competitor and it's the direct result of Kreese's methods driving away most new students and breaking down the discipline of the ones that remain.
  • This is most directly seen with Hawk; under Johnny's tutelage he gained enough confidence and skill to mow through a tournament of experienced fighters in his first year of competition and his proclivities were well managed enough to be a legitimate advantage. Under Kreese, his ego spirals out of control and his aggression affects his technical skills to the point where he is defeated by Demitri despite having an overwhelming advantage in experience and conditioning.
  • It's also shown by contrasting Hawk with Miguel, Johnny's first and most loyal student. He takes to Johnny's Internal Reformist attitude, and scores an up-swing in his social life and fighting style, reigniting some of Sam's feelings for him (in spite of her growing attraction to Robby and Miguel's own relationship with Tory), as well as defeating Hawk handily in the Coyote Creek challenge. During the brawl at the end of the season, his self-control and discipline manages to outlast Robby's, even though that was Robby's biggest advantage during Season 1, with Miguel successfully subduing Robby towards the end of the fight. It's just a shame his display of mercy occurred at the exact same time Robby reached his Rage Breaking Point...
  • We also see this with Johnny's attitude to recruitment in Season 3. While Johnny was able to take a Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits and bullied nerds and turn them into a Badass Crew of skilled fighters, Kreese simply recruits already formed "natural athletes" and makes no effort to teach anyone he perceives as weak. He kicks Mitch out of the dojo for losing to an "untrained fighter" like Kyler, without considering that it might reflect poorly on him as a teacher that one of his own students was defeated so easily. He also refuses to allow the girl that Tory defeats to join the dojo despite her showing decent potential, robbing himself of a potentially strong recruit because he couldn't be bothered to train someone who's not already better than one of his best students. Johnny can build a fighter from the ground up, while Kreese is incapable of doing anything more than taking an already strong fighter and refining their skills.
  • He is inferior to Daniel too. While there is an obvious gap between an adult and a teenage student, Robby's karate assault on Johnny following his Face–Heel Turn is so utterly ineffective that he fails to land even a single hit. Whatever Kreese has displaced Daniel's teachings with isn't working so far, and definitely doesn't involve balance.
• Kreese's mentality that "war never ends" makes a certain amount of sense for a Vietnam veteran. Unlike World War II (which Mr. Miyagi served in), where the US fought the war to a conclusive end, the Vietnam War essentially became an abandoned campaign. The public backlash during the time of the conflict eventually resulted in the decision of calling back all US forces before a decisive victory could be achieved, and the soldiers who served were basically told that the whole thing was a waste. Cobra Kai was Kreese's way of keeping the war (but really, his war) going, and nothing will give him the "victory" he felt he was robbed of short of the world knowing that his students/soldiers are the best.
  • In many ways, Kreese shows a lot of elements of a soldier struggling to reintegrate back into society. Many ex-servicemen find it difficult to go from highly structured and regimented military life, to being thrown back into civilian life with no deprogramming or assistance; this was particularly bad for Vietnam vets, who also struggled with the unjust social stigma the war resulted in. It's particularly notable that Kreese spent his years after Cobra Kai shut down being destitute and bouncing between menial job to menial job, never able to settle. The dojo was in many ways the only thing giving him direction and purpose, which goes a long way to explaining why he took his vendetta with Daniel so far in The Karate Kid: Part III, and why he went to such lengths to usurp Johnny once he found out the dojo had reopened.
  • Another ex-servicemen trait seen in Kreese (and another common issue particularly associated with Vietnam vets) is how his 'war never ends' mentality often comes as a result of PTSD. Since soldiers suffering shell shock are stuck in a perpetual state of being 'switched on' (that is, they think they're constantly in battle), they see underlying conflicts in everyday civilian life and will act with extreme prejudice, feeling as if their fight or flight instinct has kicked in. Kreese - like many vets, particularly from Vietnam - likely never got help to overcome this, and let his vigilance become malignant. There is no way that (prior to the mandated therapy of Season Five) Kreese would have ever gone to therapy or asked for help in the intervening decades; indeed, he probably saw his hypervigilance as a kind of strength.
    • Also, like Johnny, Kreese sees a society of people who have gone soft and don't know how to handle true conflict. Combine this with the bitterness he felt as a Vietnam vet and the horrors he experienced during war, and it makes sense why he hates weakness; as far he's concerned, society is ungrateful and doesn't honour the sacrifices he made. On top of that, people like Daniel and Mr. Miyagi have the audacity to preach to him about how peace and kindness are paramount. So to Kreese, encouraging people to be bullies and thugs isn't just a mentality; it's a way at getting revenge on society for living fat on the sacrifices made by strong, capable people like him, and sticking it to idealists like Miyagi-Do who don't realise how sometimes you have to be violent and dishonourable to save your hide in the real world, not just in an arbitrary contest.
  • It's also possible that Kreese is envious of Miyagi for having gotten to serve in World War II — as mentioned, World War II was fought to a decisive end and victory for the United States. Patriotism following the war swelled and the soldiers that served were lauded in history as "the Greatest Generation". Mr. Miyagi, an immigrant and recipient of the Medal Of Honor, being one of those "greats" just adds to Kreese's jealousy. This is darkly contrasted to the Vietnam War and its aftermath, as America essentially abandoned the war and many of the soldiers were stigmatized upon returning home.
  • This gains extra layers when Silver is reintroduced, as his whole goal is to spread his influence as far and wide as possible. One wonders how much the two of them encouraged each other's bad habits and ideals, especially the period in between coming home from Vietnam and Karate Kid III.
• Despite Miguel being her boyfriend and as culpable (if not more so) for cheating on her as Sam was, Tory makes Sam the sole target of her anger in the season 2 finale. Why doesn't she lift a finger to hurt Miguel, even though that kiss was clearly very mutual between him and Sam? Because Tory's problem is not actually about Miguel at all; it's about Sam and what she represents to Tory, which is being a Spoiled Brat Rich Bitch who gets everything she wants for no effort, while having the audacity to judge Tory for doing what it takes just to survive. Sam taking her boyfriend was just another thing she undeservedly got, and the last straw on an already escalating number of petty but numerous beefs she had. So her taking Sam to town was less about getting revenge for Miguel and more getting revenge on what she represents in Tory's eyes: undeserved privilege.
• Sam's rivalry with Tory is, like the main rivalry between Daniel and Johnny, the product of each person having a perspective of the other that's not accurate to the reality of it.
  • Sam: Sam's first impression of Tory is made by Tory stealing a bottle of vodka from the beach club and bragging she could steal the silverware out from under their noses. Sam tells Tory, "You should put that back. You could get into big trouble," and then, "You shouldn't steal anything." As we learn later, being judged for stealing is a sore spot for Tory, as she later reveals how her mom got fired from a restaurant for bringing home leftovers to feed Tory and her brother. The problem is, Sam doesn't know this. And how could she? As evidenced by the fact that Tory doesn't recognize her (and Aisha had to introduce them), Sam and Tory have never met before this. Sam doesn't know Tory, therefore, she doesn't know Tory's financial situation. This encounter takes place at the beach club, which seems to be an exclusive club for the wealthy and their guests, and since Sam has never seen Tory before, she has no way of knowing that Tory isn't wealthy. For all Sam knows, Tory is from another wealthy family and she's never seen Tory before because Tory's family only have just got a membership. But Tory knows her own financial situation, so when Sam judges her for stealing, it's easy to understand why Tory takes it personally and feels like Sam's judging her for not being wealthy. But just because Tory feels like Sam is judging her for having less doesn't mean that's what's actually happening. She's just judging Tory for stealing.
  • Tory: Tory's opinion of Sam is that she's an entitled Rich Bitch who's never had to deal with any hardships and is judging her for not being wealthy. When in reality, neither of those are true. First off, Sam has actually been shown to downplay and refrain from bragging about her wealth when she's around someone she knows has less than her, as shown by her interactions with both Miguel and Robby. As for hardships, just in the previous school year, Sam dated Kyler, who turned out to only want her for sex and constantly objectified her, tried to date rape her, and when she refused his advances, he slut-shamed her to the school. She had to put up with constant cyberbullying for at least a month or so. In other words, Tory is judging Sam for what Sam is judging her for.
• All the way back in the first film, Mr. Miyagi told Daniel "No such thing bad student. Only bad teacher. Teacher say, student do." By the end of Season 2, Daniel and Johnny have embodied this lesson, allowing their personal rivalry to infect their students, leading to all-out Mob War. Not only that, they were so focused on preparing their students to defend themselves in a violent confrontation they didn't teach any methods for making sure a confrontation doesn't get violent in the first place. Both men have become the "bad teacher." In the first film, Miyagi warns, "If you look for revenge, start by digging two graves," and in the second film, he warns "Never put passion before principle. Even if win, you lose." Two more lessons Daniel neglected in priming his students to be prepared for Cobra Kai.
• In the season 2 premiere, when the Cobra Kais are at Applebee's celebrating Miguel's victory at the All-Valley, one might have noticed that Johnny isn't there. Seems odd that the sensei would miss out, but it's not just because he needs to encounter Kreese, but because in the first episode of season 1 Sid mentioned how Johnny got banned from Applebee's over a Noodle Incident, one that the police got involved in. It also makes more sense considering that there's only one Applebee's in the San Fernando Valley.
  • Additionally, Johnny may have felt that the kids would have a better time without their teacher present.
• There's an irony in that in the individual skirmishes of the school brawl, each of the Cobra Kais would've won their fights if they actually truly fought using "no mercy". For while they had the stronger fighters, they lost due to holes in their actual offense that the Miyagi-Dos exploited.
  • Bert vs. Nate: Bert kicked Nate's glasses off and then waited for him to come back from that and say "Oh now you're in trouble" before jumping on top of him and throwing punches. If Bert had followed up with another attack he could've bagged that win, or at least he would've had the upper hand until the security guard broke them up.
  • Mitch vs. Chris: Mitch has Chris on the ground from that clean high kick. But Mitch's decision to stand there and come up with a one-liner gave Chris an opening to knock him out with the textbook. If he'd just "finished it" like Kreese had been teaching them, Chris would've lost. (To be fair, they were about equal anyway. It was more about right move at right time here)
  • Hawk vs. Demetri: While Demetri kinda won due to convenience, this can also be blamed on Hawk's style when one compares his final movements to the start of the fight. Earlier he was wild, throwing punches, dodging, and kicking his opponents mercilessly. When he confronts Demetri, it barely even looks like he's taking it seriously. He throws a few half-hearted punches and a kick. Then he tries again before Demetri takes advantage of the opening and the fact Hawk had tired himself.
  • Tory vs. Sam: Tory might've actually won if she didn't showboat her bracelet in front of Sam's face, say "No mercy", and then draw back her punch. If she'd just punched Sam, gotten on top of her and came down with that hook, she'd have won the fight.
  • Miguel vs. Robby: Miguel definitely had this one won and would've have if he hadn't shown mercy to Robby.
  • It's worth noting that of these five in question, all but Tory ultimately ended up going with Johnny to Eagle Fang, and that, fittingly, taking advantage of holes in an enemy's offense is essentially the central principle of Miyagi-Do.

Season 3

• In the aftermath of the brawl, it does seem odd that Tory and Robby were the only students expelled. But then you realize they probably were made the scapegoats for the whole thing by the school, and the police just took the school's word for it. It makes sense as they were the only two who actually put another kid in the hospital (Sam and Miguel). Also, their crimes weren't limited to just starting and ending a school brawl. Besides Robby's obvious attempted manslaughter, accident or not, Tory assaulted a faculty member to hijack the school intercom and announce her intention to possibly kill another student. That on its own is enough to warrant expulsion even without the subsequent fight. Combine that with numerous eyewitness statements, cell phone videos of the fight, and their nonexistent/lackluster school records, and of course they got the harshest punishments.
  • As for why Miguel doesn't seem to be punished at all by the school or the law, despite being the one to start the fight with Robby, is because at least as far as the school is concerned, it wasn't immediately clear if Miguel was going to survive his injuries, so why bother? The suspensions that were handed out were for two weeks, which is exactly how long Miguel was in a coma for anyway. He doesn't go back to school immediately after being discharged from the hospital, though, and it's never established whether this was because he wasn't medically cleared to go back yet or because he was serving a suspension, or both.
  • As for why Miguel didn't get in trouble with the law at all, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office probably decided that it would look bad to charge the paralytic student with a crime. We do see some media coverage that seems to support the idea that he was somewhat lionized in the aftermath of the fight, so it's entirely possible that the city and the school want to avoid even more bad press.
  • Sam and Demetri (especially Demetri) both have a genuine claim of self-defense when it comes to their actions during the fight. Sam is the daughter of a wealthy and well-known local businessman. She just wasn't going to get punished very harshly. Hell, her mom probably could've gotten the suspension she did receive lifted if she complained to the right people. The LaRussos also might've had grounds to sue the school for their failure to protect Sam, as the administrators should've put the school on lockdown and had security subdue Tory before she could get anywhere near Sam. Likewise, Demetri sought out a teacher first, and only resorted to physical blows as a last resort to drive off Hawk.
  • At the end of the day, as inept as the administrators may be, they at least are smart enough to know it would look very bad on them to expel a dozen students on the first day of a new school year.
• In season 1 episode 2, Demetri said to Miguel and Eli, "I don't care if Yasmine is the meanest girl at school. I'd kill both of you just to get her to spit in my face." His prediction more or less comes true by season 3: Eli is metaphorically dead (replaced by Hawk), Miguel nearly dies, and Demetri gets into a relationship with Yasmine.
• At first glance, the relationship between Demetri and Yasmine in Season 3 might come off as a Crack Pairing or a case of Opposites Attract, but closer inspection shows that personality-wise they’re actually quite alike. They are both mouthy assholes who love to verbally attack people with personal insults, sometimes even when everyone can see that it will get them an ass whooping.
• When the "natural athletes" are invited to join Cobra Kai, only Kyler wins his match and actually joins, while Brucks and Sarah are defeated. That was to be expected: Brucks is a powerlifter and Sarah a basketball player, they may have athleticism but no real fighting skill and were going against opponents that had both Karate skills and physical conditioning aimed for combat, they could only lose. Kyler, on the other hand, is a wrestler and has finally taken seriously his training, so he had both strength and skills and won his initiation match against Mitch.
  • Speaking of Mitch, Kreese kicks him out and explains to Hawk "he's not Cobra Kai material". Mitch didn't just lose to Kyler, he gave up. And to Kreese, that was unforgivable.^note Never mind that he was in a headlock he didn't know how to get out of; in fact, that particular lock is very difficult to escape.
  • Kreese also calls Kyler "an untrained fighter", even when he not only knows he's a trained wrestler, he invited him to Cobra Kai because he's a trained wrestler and good at it. Point is, Kyler is trained at scholastic wrestling, not any combat sport - to Kreese he might as well have been untrained.
• Why did Robby have so much trouble beating Shawn and his friends in their first fight? Robby got his experience sparring with Sam and Daniel, both expert karatekas (and later mentoring Demetri somewhat). He's used to primarily fighting other karate students. But Shawn almost certainly did not learn to fight from a dojo; instead, he's a street fighter with no grace, formal training, or technique. And because he doesn't have any formal training, he's much more of a threat to Robby, because the latter isn't used to fighting someone like that.
• Chozen reveals that Miyagi-Do has a pressure point technique... And Mr. Miyagi's "healing hands" ability in the first movie is likely based on the same principle. Daniel, however, can't do the "healing hand" trick... And is completely unfamiliar with the pressure point technique until Chozen springs it on him.
• Why didn't Mr. Miyagi teach Daniel the pressure point moves of Miyagi-Do? Because they are used for aggression and to disable an opponent for a kill, and Mr. Miyagi's philosophy was about defense and showing mercy. So he wouldn't want to pass it on to his student.
  • Going further, Sato (who likely learned the technique from Miyagi's father, who had taught them both) likely trained Chozen to use the move specifically to end a fight non-violently and without maiming or killing an opponent, which he took to heart. In turn, Chozen plays a Trickster Mentor to Daniel before teaching him the technique, trusting that Daniel will follow Mr. Miyagi's example and never use it to kill (a gamble that later proves true in the season finale).
  • Miyagi not teaching it to Daniel is a counterpart to Sato not having taught Chozen the breathing technique, as in their different approaches to Karate the techniques they didn't teach have no place. Sato, however, learned better when Miyagi used an advanced version to break the log... But Miyagi, in a different situation, never saw any need to teach Daniel the pressure point technique.
• Sam's nightmare in which she imagines Tory trying to drown her in the Miyagi-Do fountain evokes shades of the scene from the film adaptation of The Outsiders when Bob, Randy and the Socs stick Ponyboy's head in a fountain and try to drown him. Ponyboy's friend Johnny Cade responded by taking a switchblade to knife Bob. Johnny Cade was played in that movie by Ralph Macchio pre-Karate Kid fame, and Sam is reading the book in season 2 finale right before the school brawl begins.
  • The Outsiders is about a rivalry between a gang of working class kids known as the Greasers, and a gang of white upper-class kids known as the Socs (short for "Socials"). Tory's animosity towards Sam is at least partially motivated by her envy towards Sam's privileged lifestyle.
  • The nightmare also invokes shades of Nightmare on Elm Street with the way Tory first appears in it. What did Amanda call Tory during the PTA meeting? A "dimestore Freddy Kreuger".
• When Ron approaches Daniel to inform him about the All-Valley Tournament's cancellation, he says "The way the All-Valley Committee feels, if there's one person that can convince the city to overturn their decision, it's the two-time champ." In the end, it's not Daniel or Johnny—both of whom are two-time champions in the All-Valley Tournament— who convince the city council members to reconsider, but Sam and Miguel, their star students who've embraced their senseis' life philosophies.
  • The underlying meaning is that it's not about Daniel (or Johnny) having the prestige of being a two time champion. Instead it was about showing the council what karate truly meant. Showing the virtues and honor and teachings of what learning karate and practicing it for the right reason meant: A way to show confidence in who you are. Daniel and Johnny have partially lost sight of that due to their feud. Instead it was Sam and Miguel. That's why the appeals made by the three adults for the tournament is a complete debacle, full of blame and hostility, while the two teens get it done just by speaking from their hearts and personal experience.
  • It's no accident that the 30+ year rivalry that was passed down to the kids is partially solved by the kids, righting their parents' / father figures' wrongs. In the last two episodes of season 3, Sam and Miguel come up with a plan that involves putting aside everyone's differences in order to reach for their common goal, which contrasts with how Johnny and Daniel can't keep themselves from snarking at each other at dinner until Ali intercedes.
• After successfully saving the All-Valley Tournament, Sam and Miguel celebrate with RC Colas at the Miyagi-Do dojo. Smart move for both of them because they've both had less than pleasant experiences with Alcohol-Induced Idiocy that ruined their relationship (Miguel trying to fight Robby in season 1, Sam kissing Miguel while she was drunk in season 2), so they want to avoid making any impulsive decisions while under the influence that could hinder their second go at a relationship.
• Sam and Miguel rekindling their romance was a very crucial element to getting the Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang dojo alliance to even work out. The kids are loyal to their friends just as much if not more so than they are to their dojos. When the dojos saw each other at the LaRusso house, the reason they don't leave immediately is because they both trust Sam and Miguel respectively (Sam had been running Miyagi-Do in Daniel's absence, while Johnny let Miguel lead the students in warmup exercises). It took a few words from Miguel, Sam, and Demetri but ultimately it was the connection of Miguel and Sam literally bridging the gap between the dojos that gave them the opportunity needed to unite them.
• Sam getting back together with Miguel so easily in season 3 makes sense when you realize throughout season 2, she'd never gotten over their breakup, and there are three versions of Miguel throughout the show: Version 1 is Miguel in Season 1 up to the end of episode 9 when he accidentally hits Sam. Version 2 is from when he accidentally hits Sam to episode 7 of Season 2, when he returns Miyagi's medal. Version 3 is from when he returns the medal onwards. Season 1 and Season 3 Miguel are roughly the same person, while season 2 is his "bad boy" phase. Sam always loved the Season 1 / Season 3 version of Miguel. She just didn't know if he still existed throughout season 2.
  • Season 2 Episode 1: In the first episode of Season 2, Sam looks through her pictures of Miguel, heartbroken, before she blocks him. She no longer recognizes the boy in those pictures with her. When she pulls up to Cobra Kai to talk to Aisha, she looks sad when Miguel is brought up because she's not ready to talk with him because of his attitude the last time they talked.
  • Episode 2: Miguel calls Sam using Aisha's phone and she doesn't sound angry with him. Miguel says he wishes things could go back to the way they were, and Sam sadly replies that it won't be that easy. From her attitude and tone of voice, Sam was ready to start trying to work with Miguel to become at least friends again though. What scuttled any chances here was the ad Daniel made for Miyagi-Do dissing on Cobra Kai, and then the rebuttal ad that Johnny responded with, putting Miguel and Sam on opposites sides again.
  • Episode 3: Miguel leads Cobra Kai in the hijacking of the Miyagi-Do demo at Valley Fest. Once again Sam just looks sad. The Miguel that hijacks the demo just looks like a headcase and someone with a large ego in her mind. Not the nice humble boy that defended her from Kyler.
  • Episode 6: When Moon is over and Sam tells her about how she and Robby almost kissed, Moon asks Sam if Miguel knew. To which Sam weakly replies that there's nothing to know. This implies that Moon was aware that her friend was not over Miguel as much as she may have thought.
  • Episode 8: At the roller rink, Sam is sad when she sees Tory kiss Miguel to mark her territory, and also is upset when Miguel tells her that he's dating Tory. The reason Sam is sad though, isn't because she's jealous (which was Tory's reason for dating Miguel) or because of her dislike for Tory. But it's because Sam knows about the bad deeds Cobra Kai has done, like attack her, Robby and Demetri at the mall, and trashed Miyagi-Do. Keep in mind that Sam doesn't know who trashed Miyagi-Do. So for Miguel to date someone in Cobra Kai it makes it seem like he's okay with what they stand for. Sam doesn't like this because she truly thought Miguel was a better person than that. As a side note about episode 8, notice that neither Sam nor Miguel want to reveal to the other that they are dating someone new. Miguel doesn't introduce Tory as his new girlfriend and Sam says she isn't there with Robby on a date.
  • Episode 9: Moon's party has a lot. When Sam talks to Moon on Facetime, she mentions to Sam that at least she's over Miguel, to which Sam weakly replies "yeah," like she doesn't exactly believe that's true. Then Sam goes to her closet and picks ups Senor Octopus, bringing back memories of their first date. She's thinking of who Miguel used to be. The person she fell in love with. She missed that person. Then at the party, the second Sam finds out Miguel returned the Medal of Honor, she has confirmation of what she hoped all summer, that there was some trace of the Miguel she dated last school year. He wasn't entirely gone. That's partially why she kisses him so quickly after. She had those feelings all summer and just wanted something to show her that he wasn't a bad person.
  • Senor Octopus is on the chair in Sam's bedroom when Daniel and Amanda go in to it at the beginning of episode 10 in season 2. We see Sam pick up Señor Octopus at the beginning of "Pulpo," hug him, and have a flashback to her first date with Miguel. That means that following that she actually took Senor Octopus out of the corner of the closet that it was buried in and decided to put him out in the open on the chair in her room. Meaning it wasn't Aisha telling her Miguel returned the Medal of Honor that led her to change her mind about Miguel, but that she must have realized her conflicting feelings and acknowledge them even before this. Likely, after Miguel apologized to her at the roller rink, she realized that maybe they had a chance to at least start over and so she stopped hiding Senor Octopus and in general stopped suppressing her emotions about Miguel.
  • Episode 10: At the end of the school brawl, Sam is one of only two people to run over to Miguel after he falls over the railing (Hawk being the other), and she tries to reach down and comfort Miguel as you can see. For the last 4 months, she's hated who Miguel had become. He had become someone different that the person who first asked her out , and their few conversations were always very closed off and defensive. They only had one good conversation which ultimately led to a drunken kiss. Yet despite all of this, her heart immediately tells her she needs to comfort Miguel. It's in traumatic moments like this that people show how they truly feel. Even later in the hospital when Sam gets over the initial shock of what happened, she still only cares about Miguel. Doesn't care about her own injury. Doesn't care about Tory. Doesn't even care about what happens to Robby in that moment. Her sole thought is that Miguel needs to be okay so that she has another chance to try at least being friends with him again.
• When Kreese congratulates Tory, Hawk, Robby and Kyler for the snake heist, notice that Tory, Robby and Kyler are all wearing dark-colored socks and clothing, while Hawk has white socks and a bright yellow shirt. Guess who defects to Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang?
  • Hawk's outfit from the snake heist through the home invasion is that yellow shirt and red jacket (it's around his waist at the zoo). During the home invasion, his binary brother Demetri is wearing a red shirt and yellow flannel.
  • And why else was Demetri wearing red while his fellow Miyagi-Dos generally wear blue? Demetri makes the winning argument during the Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang parent trap to keep Eagle Fang there, by invoking his own history with Cobra Kai.
• Hawk seems shockingly Easily Forgiven after everything he's done. But it should be remembered that he and Demetri had been friends for years, possibly since childhood. Eli adopted the "Hawk" persona maybe a year earlier, in-Universe, and had only become a serious Jerkass about it in the last few months. And it's clear that Demetri has always seen this as an aberration, not who Eli really is. When Hawk threatened to attack him at the mall, Demetri's response was utter disbelief. At Moon's party, he tried to reconcile, and when that was rejected, he publicly taunted Eli, clearly still not seeing him as a real threat. Even when Hawk was about to break his arm, Demetri's response was to desperately try to remind him who it was that he was hurting. Demetri just wanted his best friend back from the beginning. When it finally happens, he's not about to reject it. And since Demetri was the main person who Hawk hurt, it's natural for everyone else to go along with his forgiveness.
  • Season 4 shows that Hawk was not completely forgiven by everyone else, but they're eventually willing to follow Demetri and give him a chance to earn it.
  • Additionally, with the exception of Demetri and Sam (who almost never interacted with shy Eli or Hawk outside of a fight), all the students at this point are ex-Cobra Kai. They know how toxic and addictive Kreese is.
• As abrupt as Hawk's Heel–Face Turn was, it was probably good it happened when it did since he was on borrowed time with Cobra Kai after Kreese completely took over.
  • First off, Hawk is not a natural born fighter, so he doesn't have the primary trait that Kreese looks for in a Cobra. In fact, Eli's "Hawk" persona is a façade. This is why Demetri told Hawk, "I know who you really are, Eli." And Robby realizes it too. That's why when they fight in the tournament in the semifinals in season 1, when Hawk is trash talking Robby, Robby comments about Hawk's haircut; while in season 3, Robby calls out Hawk for drinking just to look cool. Robby has experience scamming/manipulating people, so reading people is a skill he's developed. Kreese, an even bigger master manipulator, knew from the start that "Hawk" is just an act. And, though Kreese knows Hawk is not a natural Cobra, he did not pass up the opportunity to use and manipulate Hawk as much as possible.
  • In terms of pack hierarchy, Hawk is not an alpha. He's a beta, and that's not a bad thing. Betas are usually one of the strongest in the pack and step up and take charge when needed. We see Hawk step up whenever Miguel is not there (similar to how Sam steps up at Miyagi-Do in season 3). And, with Tory, Hawk takes a step back. Outside the zoo, when he challenges Tory about Robby being there, he immediately backs down when she challenges him back. Tory also leads the charge in the house fight.
    • Kyler is not an alpha and is not even much of a beta. And, after Hawk beat Brucks, Kyler backed down and knew his place. But Kyler's recruitment to Cobra Kai meant Hawk would have to fight and bully alongside the person who used to be his own bully, which didn't sit right with Hawk.
    • Robby stealing the snake and the way Kreese lavishes praise on him for the whole thing while ignoring Hawk, Kyler and Tory, cemented his position as the new alpha. But because Hawk always saw Miguel as his alpha in Cobra Kai, he wouldn't accept Robby as the new alpha for long. Not to mention, Robby was the prize Kreese wanted all along. Hawk would soon realize that, between Robby and Tory, he never really had a shot at being the alpha at Cobra Kai.
    • Another thing about betas, though, is that they are also one of the most loyal in the pack, which is why Hawk's turn was based on loyalty. He and Miguel are loyal to one another, as seen by the fact that he runs to Miguel's side when he's injured in the school brawl, and shows up to see him in the hospital (note that the only other person who does either of these things is Sam, Miguel's ex at the time and a Miyagi-Do).
  • Hawk's loyalty to Kreese's version of Cobra Kai was always in question. He realizes very early in the season that Kreese is not loyal to his students, even students like Bert and Mitch who've shown loyalty to the dojo from the day they joined. Kreese also recruits Robby, who Hawk considered an enemy because he put Hawk's friend in the hospital. Because of this, Hawk started to question his own loyalties.
    • During the season, Hawk breaks Demetri's arm in the laser tag fight, and Demetri had been his best friend growing up. Hawk also had a falling out with Miguel when he came back to school because he no longer believed in the Cobra Kai mentality. And Hawk had turned his back on Johnny, although he'd been the one who'd helped Eli become "Hawk". So during the house fight, Hawk's internal battle about his loyalties came to a head. Seeing Demetri, Miguel, and his former Cobra Kai friends being beaten by his new CK friends made Hawk realize where his loyalties lay and who was really loyal to him, so he made his turn.
  • It's important to note that the only reason that Kreese was able to sway Hawk over to his philosophy to begin with in season 2 was because Johnny ultimately failed Hawk as a sensei. Johnny didn't really get a handle on the aggressiveness that Hawk exhibited at the All Valley. He got a handle on Miguel's, but with Hawk, Johnny just scolded him in front of the entire class essentially for doing exactly what Johnny taught him to do, and then when Miguel confronted him about his own punishment afterward because he was confused, it didn't even occur to Johnny that Hawk might be feeling the same. He never bothered to explain to Hawk the difference between "no mercy" vs. "no honor" like he does with Miguel. When Hawk and Miguel find out that Robby is Johnny's son, they're understandably upset because they feel like Johnny betrayed them by punishing them for following the philosophy he taught them just because it happened to be used against his son. They confront Johnny about this, only for him to immediately shut them out and punish them again without much explanation. He explains his history with Robby later on to Miguel...but again Hawk is left out. Throughout season 2, Johnny was so focused on keeping Miguel out from under Kreese's thumb that he basically allowed all of his other students — but, perhaps most notably Hawk — to slip through the cracks.
• Sam is instantly open to giving her relationship with Miguel a second chance once he tells her that the Cobra Kais "aren't my friends anymore. Not after what they did to you guys." It's likely partially motivated by Sam realizing Miguel has learned the same lesson she learned in season 1 about why it's bad to have blind spots when it comes to your friends. Both Sam and Miguel have a lot in common, including having a blind spot for their "friends" and just trying to fit in with a group.
  • In season 1, Sam stayed friends with Yasmine and Moon for a while after they began bullying Aisha, but it took that bullying being directed onto Sam herself (because of her refusing Kyler's advances) for her to realize it was a problem and break things off with them.
  • Likewise, in season 2, Miguel fought Hawk in the Coyote Creek challenge when he found out Hawk stole Miyagi's Medal of Honor, and returned the medal to the LaRussos, but that was the end of it. He returned it to try to show Sam that he wasn't an asshole...and that's as far as he went. He still remained friends with Hawk and Cobra Kai, people who had vandalized Miyagi-Do and stole the Medal of Honor. That wasn't enough for him to change sides. He only cared about it as a way to reconcile with Sam by returning the medal ^note and Robby, being a skilled people reader, likely suspected this despite Miguel's attempts to claim otherwise, which could be a secondary reason why he kept the truth from Sam. It's only in season 3, when Miguel hears about what Cobra Kai has been doing to Miyagi-Do in his absence, that he confronts Hawk about it and literally stops being friends with them. While this is partially because of Sam, in the broader scope of things, Miguel is finally drawing a line with how far he'd cross. Cobra Kai turned in to the bullies that he joined to be able to stand up to. He quite literally could not be in Cobra Kai because they were bullying Sam and others, and that is not who he is.
• Season 3 marks the point where the lines begin to be blurred as to what Miyagi-Do karate is. In the Karate Kid movies, and in the first 2 seasons of Cobra Kai, it was very black and white: Cobra Kai was bad and Miyagi-Do was good. Cobra Kai was aggressive offense and Miyagi Do was defense. But in season 3, it's shown that that Miyagi-Do karate and Johnny's vision of Cobra Kai/Eagle Fang have more in common than people think. In the very first episode of Season 3, when Daniel finds Sam seeking solace at the Miyagi dojo, Sam says to her dad, "I thought we were the good guys," and Daniel replies, "We are...at least, we try to be". It fits the show's theme of everything being grey rather than black or white. But everything really comes to a head in episode 5, aptly named "Miyagi-Do":
  • In Daniel's subplot, he travels to Okinawa, and meets Chozen. Chozen reveals Mr. Miyagi kept a lot of secrets about Miyagi-Do karate from Daniel. Secrets that change the meaning behind the style. Sometimes acting in only self defense is no longer possible...
  • ...and Sam has been learning this lesson in her subplot. Sam has gained some flack from viewers for going against Miyagi-Do teachings by leading the Miyagi-Dos to ambush the Cobra Kais at the arcade. When actually, it only goes against the outdated and black and white ideology of the films. Cobra Kai had been harassing Miyagi-Do for weeks at that point (and Playing the Victim Card to get out of trouble while the Miyagi-Dos get disproportionately punished). You can't always sit around and let yourself get stepped on, because if your enemy knows you won't retaliate, they'll just continue to escalate and take advantage of your lack of retaliation. Which is why what Sam did was something more similar to what Johnny would teach: standing up to bullies. It's no coincidence that it's Sam who makes the first move. They've spent three seasons showing her as part of the bridge between the two dojos (along with Miguel), specifically through her wardrobe. Sam wears a mix of Cobra Kai and Miyagi Do colors all the time, whether that be blue and red patterns, or a wide assortment of purple and maroon colored outfits. And in the arcade fight, she is wearing a maroon shirt that looks purple in the predominantly blue lighting of the arena.
  • The parallel to how the lines between Miyagi-Do's and Eagle Fang's philosophies are blurred become more apparent in the speech Miguel gives to save the All Valley. In the speech he mentions that karate is about "confidence and discipline", "to show the bullies of the world that we’re not afraid." That doesn't sound like something Kreese would teach because it isn't. It's what Johnny taught. But what Johnny teaches is remarkably similar to the principles behind Miyagi-Do: fighting for the right reasons. Which is another reason why Sam stands with Miguel during the speech too: she and Miguel are the star pupils of Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang. By them standing together in the speech, it's specifically showing how the two are united and their principles are actually very similar. And Sam is the first to realize this, before even Daniel does. You can see Daniel though, listening and slowly nodding along as he listens to what Miguel has to say.
  • Sam's realization becomes more apparent in episode 9 when she and Miguel are having some alone time in the Miyagi-Do dojo.
  Miguel: [looking at a picture of Mr. Miyagi] So this is the guy that founded Miyagi-Do?
  Sam: That's Mr. Miyagi. Taught my dad everything he knows.
  Miguel: Oh. Like how Sensei Lawrence learned everything from Kreese.
  Sam: Mr. Miyagi was nothing like Kreese. Miyagi taught karate the right way, focusing on defense.
  Miguel: Yeah, but sometimes the best defense is more offense.
  Sam: This is the problem. The styles are so far apart. Your sensei will never see eye to eye with my dad.
  Miguel: I think it's the other way around.
  • ...notice that Sam doesn't say that Miyagi taught karate as being "only for defense," she says, "Miyagi taught karate the right way, focusing on defense." An interesting word choice considering Miyagi-Do was supposed to be "for defense ONLY" before, and she agrees when Miguel counters "sometimes the best defense is more offense". She realizes that Kreese's "just offense" Cobra Kai is wrong, but so is her dad's "just defense" Miyagi-Do is also wrong. They need to meet in the middle: focus on defense while still allowing offense when needed, or focus on offense while still recognizing that you need to fight only for the right reason. Trying to merge two ideologies. She's the first to realize their values aren't so different after all.
  • Sam's arc throughout Season 3 led to her suggesting the dojos combine. But it's important to point out that Robby talked about Daniel and Johnny learning from each other first. In the season 2 finale, Robby said to his father, "I know you don't wanna hear it, but Mr. LaRusso was good to me. Look, all I'm saying is...maybe you guys can learn a thing or two from each other." And Robby stood up to his bullies in the parallel scenes to the arcade fight. Even in juvie, Robby was concerned for someone else being bullied, defended Sam to Shawn, and said his karate was about self-defense. Robby wasn't receptive of Kreese when he visited...but realized from what Kreese said to him the same realization Sam came to on her own: that sometimes self-defense is no longer possible. Robby struck first, but he still was Miyagi-Do in his juvie fight. That's why his fight standing up to his bullies was also part of the "Miyagi-Do" episode. Similar to Sam, Robby is not 100% Cobra Kai and 100% Miyagi-Do. He's Johnny's son and Daniel's first (non-related) Miyagi-Do student, so he's 50% of each.
• When one thinks about it, there's many reasons why Ali was able to succeed at getting Daniel and Johnny to bury the hatchet in their rivalry once and for all. Multiple times throughout the first three seasons, Daniel and Johnny got so close to finally setting aside their differences then something ultimately blew up for them.
  • In season 1, Johnny and Daniel spend the day together talking while Daniel lets Johnny test-drive a new car, and seem like they are at a place where they could genuinely move past their rivalry. Then that all blows up because of Robby, due to Daniel finding out his first non-related pupil was Johnny's son, and Johnny finding out that his son is being trained by Daniel.
  • In season 2, when they encounter each other while on dates with their significant others, Carmen and Amanda try to trap Johnny and Daniel at the restaurant and get them to talk. It works too. As Johnny and Daniel leave the restaurant it once again looks like they finally may put their rivalry behind them. Then the next morning, Daniel finds Robby hiding Sam at Johnny's apartment after Sam drank way too much at Moon's party. Rather than let Daniel in and explain the situation, Johnny inexplicably gets defensive, causing Johnny and Daniel to fight again. Once again their effort to put their rivalry behind them has failed.
  • Early in season 3, Daniel tells Johnny how they can no longer let their mistakes dictate their kids' lives, referring to not only Robby but also Miguel, Sam, and all the kids in the dojos. The two then work together to try to locate Robby. Once again the two seem to be ready to put their rivalry to rest and then once again they blow up at each other.
  • Then you have a few examples of other characters' comments that should have helped change their minds somewhat but didn't, most notably all coming from Sam: in Season 1, Sam questions how all of Cobra Kai could be bad when she has friends in Cobra Kai, and instead of asking her what she meant, Daniel brushes it aside. In season 2, Sam originally says she doesn't want to fight Cobra Kai because she has friends there (referring to Aisha, Hawk, and maybe even Miguel even though they broke up). Once again, Daniel doesn't recognize the fact that his daughter has friends in Cobra Kai means they can't be all that awful. Then in Season 3, Miguel gives the speech to save the All Valley and Daniel listens to all the honorable things he says, even sees Sam get up and go to Miguel's side to support him, but that still doesn't change Daniel's opinion it seems. The very next morning, after catching Sam and Miguel making out in the dojo, he says he doesn't trust Miguel when talking with Sam.
  • Many characters tried to put an end to the rivalry, but ultimately only one person could do it. That person was Ali, and that was because Daniel and Johnny's whole rivalry began because of her 34 years ago. She was the only one who could get through to both of them to have them see what was there all along. Johnny and Daniel weren't so different after all. Many tried but all failed except Ali, because no one else was as close to both of them.
  • It's also poetic when Ali gets Johnny and Daniel to put their differences aside, seeing as she does it in the same episode that Sam works with Miguel to unite the kids, and Sam has a number of similarities to Ali like being at the center of a romantic rivalry between two boys.
  • Furthermore, Ali admits that while she wasn't actually in love with the UCLA football player, she did egg Daniel on just to make him mad. She did the exact same thing with Daniel to Johnny, openly flirting with him just to piss Johnny off.
• Kreese being beaten by Johnny in the Season 3 finale is a great example of Hoist by His Own Petard. Kreese insisted all season that Johnny needed to return to the old Cobra Kai ethos, "Strike First, Strike Hard, and No Mercy". Well, in their final fight in the S3 finale Kreese got exactly that from Johnny, Johnny barged into Cobra Kai, struck first in starting his fight against Kreese, struck really hard with every single hit he landed on Kreese, and if you look at his face when he's pummeling the crap out of Kreese's face, it's clear that mercy was the last thing on his mind and had it not been for Robby intervening Johnny may well have beaten Kreese to death right there and then.
• From what Kreese told Robby in juvie we can deduce that Miguel was a step ahead (at least before he got injured) of Johnny in terms of karate prowess when Johnny was his age. Kreese mentions that Johnny drew ex-champion Daryl Vidal in his first tournament and though he made it hard, he still ultimately lost. However, Miguel drew ex-champion Xander Stone (who's meant to be a modern day stand-in for Vidal at the tournament in S1) and beat him soundly, which means that Miguel is or at least could be truly "better than he ever was" as Johnny told him at the beginning of Season 2. This subtly ties in to the theme of Johnny being a better teacher than Kreese.
• In "Feel the Night", Hawk and Tory find Robby being trained at Cobra Kai by Kreese. While there's an approving nod from Tory, Hawk immediately goes to an accusatory "What the hell are you doing here?" and protests Kreese's choice. In a way, we see that Tory and Hawk are loyal to different things:
  • Tory is loyal to Kreese, since he saved her from having to sell her body out to her predatory landlord. Kreese wanted Robby in Cobra Kai, Kreese is in charge, so Tory follows along with that.
  • Hawk deep down is more loyal to his teachings. He was originally Johnny's student and part of him couldn't accept Robby being in Cobra Kai due to what he did to Miguel. This was also seen earlier in the season when Brucks and Kyler were scouted by Kreese. Those were the bullies that caused him to join Cobra Kai. That wasn't what Johnny's Cobra Kai was founded upon, and Hawk has just lost his friendship with Miguel in light of Miguel finding out Kyler had joined Cobra Kai. This whole thing also foreshadows Hawk's eventual turncoat status in the next episode, because this is happening at the same time that Sam is at Miyagi-Do convincing her dad to get to know Miguel, and like Hawk, exhibiting loyalty and trust in the morals of her dojo, and putting her teachings over her loyalty to her dad because it was the right thing to do.
    • This too makes a lot of sense. Tory has a rough home life and, as far as we know, never had any kind of paternal figure who actively supported and guided her. So of course she latches on to Kreese as the parental role model she desperately needs. Meanwhile, Hawk mentions that both of his parents are present in his life. He joined Cobra Kai not because he needed a place to belong or a role model as much, but because Johnny's teachings helped mold him into a better version of himself (before that was hijacked by Kreese). Hawk is loyal to Johnny, to Miguel, to Demetri. And even though Kreese poisons those relationships, deep down Eli knows what's right, and eventually throws his lot in with his friends.
  • The contrast between Sam's conversation with her dad, and Hawk's conversation with Kreese, says a lot about the senseis. Daniel and Johnny have teacher-student bonds, which also makes them more open-minded to the things their students say. Meanwhile, the relationship between Kreese and his students is that of a commander-soldier relationship.
• Season 3 makes it clear that Daniel missed the most important lesson of Miyagi-Do. "Rule 1: Karate is for defense only."
  • The rule doesn't say "Karate is defense only". It says "Karate is for defense only". Defense comes in many forms. And yet Daniel seems to misunderstand the meaning of this rule. Teaching that karate is only defense. He fails to see how standing up for yourself and others does follow Mr. Miyagi's teachings that karate is for defense only. Miyagi himself was certainly not averse to fighting when there was no other option—he was a soldier in World War Two, after all, and once a movie pulled a Big Damn Heroes moment. It's just that he believed fighting should never be one's first option.
  • Ironically it is Sam that picks up on that teaching before Daniel does. Sam realizes that the reason Miguel fights (most of the time) is to defend himself or others. Miguel does wrong sometimes, but at heart he has good intentions and he fights for the right reason most of the time. Sam understood that listening to his speech. About how karate taught him about confidence and standing up to bullies. That's why Sam takes his side in the speech to save the All Valley, and that's why Sam defends Miguel to Daniel when he busts them in the next episode. It's because she finally understood what Rule #1 actually meant.
  • Even after hearing Miguel's speech and watching Sam interact with Miguel, Daniel still missed what Mr. Miyagi was trying to teach about karate. He told Sam he still didn't trust Miguel. Which is when Sam tells him that "Miguel's changed. He's a good person! He's not Cobra Kai's #1 bully; he's not even in Cobra Kai anymore!" That finally prompts Daniel to give Miguel a chance and talk with him. It wasn't listening to Miguel's speech that opened Daniel up. It was listening to Sam that opened Daniel up. He seemed to finally start understanding Mr. Miyagi's lesson only after Sam made him realize it.
  • This fits the pattern of the show with the kids acting more mature and wiser when it comes to the karate rivalry. Sure, they have their own issues as high school kids, but at least when it comes to the rivalry drama, the kids are always one step ahead of the adults.
• If you think about it, Miguel showing mercy to Robby during the school fight actually made his life much better in the long run compared to if he hadn't.
  • While yes, him getting injured and paralyzed was undoubtedly horrific and tragic, if he hadn't chosen to show mercy and had broken Robby's arm instead, what would've happened was that he probably would've been suspended or even expelled (as he was the one who bum-rushed Robby at the beginning of the fight), it would've alienated him even further from Sam and may have even ended any chance of them reconciling for good, Daniel probably would've written him off as Cobra Kai's top bully for good with no possibility of him ever changing his mind, he would've been painted as one of the main villains of the entire school fight for bum-rushing Robby and ultimately breaking his arm, and he would have probably strained his relationship with Johnny by having not only going against Johnny's teachings but also injuring his son again (especially since unlike the first time at the tournament, Miguel knew Robby was Johnny's son this time around). Instead, because he showed mercy, he was painted as the victim/martyr of the brawl, he was able to ultimately rekindle his relationship with Sam in Season 3.^note It is also strongly implied that even had the school fight not happened, Sam likely was going to break up with Robby and go back to Miguel once she'd found out about Miguel returning the medal Which in turn led to him finally interacting with Daniel and being accepted by him as both Sam's boyfriend and as Johnny's (and later, Daniel's own) student, he only grew closer to/formed a deeper father/son like bond with Johnny and learned the depths of his own inner strength through the long process of recovering from his injury that they worked through together,^note Which in turn led to Carmen acting on her feelings for Johnny and he was lionized by the school and not expelled.^note it's very much possible that he might've still been suspended. It's clear that he doesn't return to school right away upon being released from the hospital, but it's never stated whether this was because he wasn't medically cleared to go back, he had to serve a suspension, or both
  • So as such, while Miguel's injury was rightly emphasized as the most serious and tragic consequence for him for the brawl, in the long run, his life actually turned out way better than if he hadn't shown mercy instead. All of this proves what both Daniel and (later) Johnny have basically said, while the "No Mercy" part of the Cobra Kai ethos might make you strong and help you win fights immediately/in the short term, it will ultimately harm you in the long run and make your life suffer.
  • More importantly, Miguel is the first confirmed case of a Cobra Kai controlling the Cobra Kai instincts in him. Johnny and his friends couldn't accomplish this, nor could Miguel's peers. So in that moment, he showed Miyagi-Do levels of restraint while having the benefits of his Cobra Kai impulses, which begs the question of how formidable he will be after getting Miyagi-Do training in season 4, seeing as he was able to master the drum technique for his fight with Kyler despite having only done it once with Sam as the lead-in to a make-out session.
• Johnny's decision to stay at the hospital and pray with Miguel's family instead of showing up to his scheduled juvie visit with Robby. Obviously, this was necessary out-of-universe to drive more of a wedge between Johnny and Robby that Kreese can exploit. But in-universe, Johnny's decision may have been, perhaps subconsciously, because he was scared of what could happen if he wasn't there for Miguel.
  Right before the school fight, when Johnny and Robby were talking in his car, Miguel called and Johnny ignored it in favor of continuing his conversation with Robby. Johnny continued to ignore Miguel's calls even after his conversation with Robby was over, for some reason, as he still wasn't answering by the time Robby was inside the school and talking to Sam. Johnny doesn't get around to listening to the message that Miguel left for him until after the fight, by which point Miguel is in the hospital, fate unknown to the characters, and it's too late for Johnny to help him.
  So the next time he's presented with the choice of talking to Robby or being there for Miguel, he remembered what happened last time and he blames himself for that outcome, thinking that maybe things might've been different if he had just answered Miguel's phone calls.
• When Robby runs into Tory at the probation office, they have this exchange:
  Tory: It's not fair, you know? Everybody else got to go back to normal, but here we are eating shit. While your girlfriend-
  Robby: Don't talk about Sam.
  Tory: She cheated on you.
  Robby: She made a mistake. Sam is a good person!
  Tory: Yeah. She sure acts like it. Just wait. She'll turn on you. Just like Miguel.
  Robby: You don't know what you're talking about.
  Tory: Then why are we both here?
  • Tory's line actually makes a lot more sense when one thinks of her perspective at that point. From her viewpoint, all the other Miyagi-Dos and Cobra Kais got suspended for two weeks for their part in the school brawl then went on with their lives like nothing happened. And Miguel is back in school and back to walking on his own two legs, so Tory just assumes he's completely fine now. Meanwhile, Tory's still on probation and Robby's just starting probation.
  • This ties into Robby's dialogue later in the episode when he catches Sam with Miguel. He shows up at Miyagi-Do, and there's Sam and Miguel. He sees Sam and Miguel having fun, play-fighting, ready to kiss, acting like they've been together this whole time Robby was in juvie, and thus he comes to the conclusion Tory already gave him i.e. "everyone else is fine now. It's just me and you being punished."
    Robby: Should've known.
    Sam: [gasps] Robby! It's—it's not what you think!
    Robby: What, did you two get together the second I was gone or wait a week to make it look good?
    Sam: It's not like that.
    Robby: So now I know why you stopped writing.
    Sam: I stopped writing because you never answered!
• Robby's final rejection of Daniel and Johnny as he throws his lot in with Kreese has a few bits going on:
  • When one watches carefully, Robby barely looks at Johnny. His attention is almost singularly focused on Daniel (and Sam, who is standing to Daniel's left). He then says, "Get out of here," to Daniel, then throws in an "all of you" for Sam, Johnny, and Miguel. Kreese then says, "Come on, son" while gesturing for Robby to go back inside with him, a direct jab to Johnny. But Robby continues only looking at Daniel and walks off without a glance at Johnny.
  • One will also notice that at the points where Robby might have been looking at Johnny, the camera generally cuts away. His anger is focused on Daniel at this moment.
  • The gist of this is that through the fight with Johnny (which only stopped because Johnny accidentally knocked Robby unconscious), Robby had cut Johnny from his heart for now. Robby had tried to do just that for his whole life, but never managed to really do it because he never really wanted to. He had always hoped his dad would decide he did love him, and that he did want to be in his life. He never really blamed Johnny for 1) being absent and 2) choosing Miguel over him. A father wouldn't do that to a child who didn't deserve it, right? So clearly, Robby felt he was the problem. Before this night, Robby had tried to tear Johnny from his heart repeatedly, but only succeeded in bruising it in the process. This time, though, it was different.
  • It's interesting that William Zabka has described Johnny as being "purged" after his fight with Kreese, because the same can be said for Robby. Like, he came to on that floor, and Johnny was gone from his heart. Therefore, in that whole final scene, he barely acknowledges Johnny. He doesn't need to. But suddenly Daniel, Sam, and Sam's boyfriend (who is also the kid that Johnny has always prioritized ahead of Robby) is in front of him, and Robby wants the LaRussos to know that that he's cutting them out too. And he does. Daniel's love is only about a year old. Sam's love is only about seven months old. Daniel's "betrayal" is new, and Sam's "betrayal" is barely 24 hours old. How easy it must've been for Robby to convince himself that the new good in his life was a fluke, the new bad just par for the course. And after doing it to his own father (his "worst enemy"), how much easier must it have been to turn the LaRussos into his "enemies" too? So then, just like that, Daniel is gone from his heart too. And then there's nothing left. Just that hollow look for Daniel before he walks away with Sam.
  • Daniel's and Johnny's reactions are also interesting. Daniel looks desperate, outright pleading, before looking absolutely crushed at Robby's rejection. When Robby went on the run, Daniel tried his hardest to find Robby, to help him when he was found, to reach out to him. And yet none of it made a difference in the end. He's so used to Robby looking up to him and forgiving him that he doesn't know how to deal with his student hating him and feeling utterly betrayed by him. Meanwhile, Johnny, whatever he's feeling internally, outwardly just looks resigned and ashamed. Being rejected by Robby is nothing new. And perhaps now he realizes, unlike Daniel, he barely tried, and at times he outright just forgot about Robby. He knows he's being punished, and he accepts it.
• Some have noted that Kreese recruiting Kyler to Cobra Kai is a bit odd, given that Kyler is of Asian descent and Kreese was known in The Karate Kid movies for being prejudiced against Asian people as shown by him regularly calling Mr. Miyagi a "slope". Except, not only does Kyler have the kind of ruthlessness Kreese wants out of his Cobras, he's also Korean-American. And Kreese was taught Tang Soo Doo, a form of martial arts that originated in Korea.
• When Robby attacks him, Johnny fights almost entirely defensively. His only purely offensive move is that one push. This foreshadows him beginning to train with Miyagi-Do in the following scene, as he's learning that there are times you don't want to be all offense. Had he learned Miyagi-Do earlier, he certainly would've been able to manage/control Robby without giving his son a concussion.
• Chozen is suddenly much friendlier to Daniel after honking his nose. This is mostly due to the fact that, of course, he's just messing with his former rival. However, there may be a little more to it. By having Daniel at his mercy and honking his nose, inverting the situation from all those years ago, he may feel as well that he's finally brought things full circle and therefore, that they are even.
• The reason Kreese went and tried to recruit "natural athletes" from basketball, powerlifting, and wrestling is that martial arts in general, and Karate in particular, are niche sports and their best athletes don't make anywhere near the money of their counterparts in powerlifting, wrestling, and especially basketball, and that's where the more athletically talented tend to be found. And if he got them to join Cobra Kai, once he trains them up they'll be naturally superior to the relatively untalented kids in the rival dojos.

Season 4

• The disappearance of background Miyagi-Do students, though the real-life reason is the stunt team switch, makes a fair amount of sense. Between the school brawl and the house fight, these teenagers have been through a lot in the course of just a few months. Both fights involved many of them getting clobbered, even if they overall gave as good as they got. It would be very understandable if their parents decided, like Aisha's did, to pull them out and move them to different schools where they wouldn't be so at risk.
• In Episode 5, Demetri shares with Hawk all the information he managed to dig up on Terry Silver. When Hawk asks how Demetri knew to look up on this despite not having known Terry Silver's name, Demetri revealed that he took the initiative by taking a photo of him when Kreese and Silver had stopped by their dojo and then used a facial recognition software to extrapolate. Tutelage under Johnny has actually taught Demetri to "strike first" in his own "nerd" way.
• So why on Earth would Piper, an in-universe woke feminist, align at a dojo with two senseis that have a history of political incorrectness (especially given that Kreese himself would not approve of Piper’s beliefs, given his disdain shown with a former Cobra Kai wearing “The Future is Female” t-shirt)? Besides the fact that Silver’s new equipment is that convincing, Silver himself may have approached her in the same way as Johnny did — with greater success given his tendency to manipulate others and get away with it. And considering that Silver is up to date with society, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if he used that method to lure Piper and her friends in.
• Cobra Kai seemed to be becoming more inclusive under Kreese than it had been the previous season; with the changes to the All Valley tournament to include weapons and forms competitions and gender-segregating the sparring bracket, Kreese and Silver needed to allow a more diverse pool of students to cover the female bracket and especially for forms (Cobra Kai heavily emphasized fighting while completely eschewing katas and demonstrations). With Silver's intent on opening multiple dojos should Cobra Kai win the tournament, it also makes sense to be more willing to accept more students even if they don't immediately meet the rigid expectations of already established skills and innate sense of brutality and "killer instincts" (e.g. Kenny and Piper).
  • This makes even more sense after watching Season Five—it's revealed that Silver's ultimate plan is to open up more dojos all across the world, and to make his style the only style. Sticking with the old Cobra Kai standard of only accepting those with already-established skills and killer instincts would be completely counterproductive.
• Eli defeating Robby in the All Valley final after continually being bested by him during the series makes perfect sense. Unlike Robby, Eli trained with all three dojos and, thus, had more of a knowledge base for their match. Not only that, but his Eagle Fang and mixed dojo training would have allowed him to combine his styles more effectively than Robby, who went straight from Miyagi-Do to Cobra Kai.
• Terry wiping the floor with Johnny at the original Cobra Kai dojo location established how far beyond he was in terms of skill and experience, but there are a few factors that also contributed to Terry's victory and Johnny's apparent nerfing. First off, unlike Kreese who had been a homeless vagabond for the previous three decades, or even Johnny himself (staying fairly fit but drifting from job to job and often dealing with depression and alcoholism), Silver has been living in luxury but still clearly knew to take better care of himself, such as undergoing therapy, going vegan, most likely exercising regularly, and apparently having kicked his smoking habit. Also, whereas Kreese would rather use brute force when confronting a threat or a problem (not unlike Johnny himself), Silver diametrically prefers to fight smarter, looking for and exploiting people's weaknesses and using pragmatism more frequently and earlier in a scrap (his first attack on Johnny was an ambush kick to the face and soon after he strikes at Johnny's trachea). Finally, going off Silver's penchant for exploiting weaknesses, he purposely baited Johnny by showering Robby and Shannon with favors — during the fight, Johnny was clearly letting his rage and frustration get to him as Silver taunts him, effectively letting Silver steer the fight however he wanted.
  • It's also unsurprising that Silver is a better fighter to begin with: Rewatch the third movie, and you'll see that Silver was good enough to make Mr. Miyagi work a little; in fact, Silver did better against him than anyone else in the franchise, including Kreese.
• All the fighters who made it to the finals were the ones who'd embraced both the Cobra Kai/Eagle Fang and Miyagi-Do styles of karate. Robby had been trained by Daniel, and gave that training to Cobra Kai, but Tory seemed to be most interested in learning what he had to teach. Eli had started with Cobra Kai, and took well to Daniel's instruction, patience, and forgiveness. Meanwhile, Sam's been studying Miyagi-Do since she was a little girl, and embraces learning Johnny's style, just as Miguel quickly absorbs Daniel's lessons. But it's more than just learning different ways to punch, kick, and block. Robby let Daniel's teachings change his life for the better, up until the tragedy at the school brawl, and despite joining Cobra Kai doesn't forget his honor, trying to be a good mentor to Kenny and respecting Eli as a Worthy Opponent. Eli embraces becoming The Atoner for his behavior under Cobra Kai. Sam is breaking out of what everyone tells her she should be to start figuring out for herself who she is. And Tory starts learning to let go of her rage and hate and accept help to move off her self-destructive life path. The four finalists are the ones who are letting the lessons they've learned shape their lives for the better.
• Kyler gets outright destroyed the moment he loses his temper against Eli not just because of his emotions, but because he is not used to the point system. His last attack gets stopped by a simple kick mid-rush, as he is a bully that used to wrestle more than strike.
• Notice the four finalists of the All-Valley (Eli, Robby, Sam, Tory) and the opponents they face en route to the finals; especially when you compare them to the semi-finalists, Miguel and Demetri. Eli, Robby, Sam, and Tory face a major character in the quarterfinals that plays a role in their character development and overall story. Eli is pitted against his former bully, Kyler, as a testament of his growth as a bullied nerd to a balanced karateka. Robby is pitted against Kenny to show the tragedy of Cobra Kai’s brutality, even to someone as endearing as a Morality Pet. Sam is pitted against Piper to provide an opponent for the former to recognize the importance of embracing both Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang styles. And finally, Tory is pitted against Devon to provide a Foreshadowing glimpse of Silver rigging the tournament to his own advantage. Miguel and Demetri on the other hand are simply fighting extras in the quarterfinals (Miguel against Locust Valley’s Post, Demetri against All-Star Karate’s Robson) en route to fighting a main character (and their former dojo teammate) in the semis (Miguel vs. Eli, Demetri vs. Robby). The All-Valley tournament is basically Eli’s, Robby’s, Sam’s, and Tory’s destiny as the season’s main characters.
• Robby’s Jerkass Realization becomes apparent twice in the season finale: when he brutally strikes Kenny to get the last point during the tournament and when he sees the effect Cobra Kai is having on Kenny when he beats up Anthony. This is both similar to in the Season 3 finale, when his dad accidentally threw him into a locker, and the season 1 finale, when Johnny saw the negative effects of his teachings on his students.
  • Furthermore, when Robby strikes Kenny for the winning point in the last round of their fight, instead of his kiai being “aits”, it’s “ass-ah”, which is Silver’s kiai.
• Technically, Daniel bringing in Chozen to help him defeat Cobra Kai isn't breaking the deal that was made the previous season. The deal he and Johnny made was with Kreese, who is now locked away in jail and has no control of Cobra Kai. They never made a deal with Silver, who is now in complete control of the dojo. Also, while the terms of what would happen if Cobra Kai won were never clearly stated, the impression was that Daniel and Johnny would stop teaching. Nothing about no one teaching any Miyagi-Do karate at all. Thus, if Chozen wants to reopen Daniel's school using Daniel's location and Daniel's students, nothing's stopping him.
• Chozen coming to the aid of Daniel is going to be of great assistance in more ways than just the obvious, as he may very well be the only character in the franchise with the relevant life experience to get Sam to finally bury the hatchet with Tory, the girl who tried to murder Sam twice, by showing her that someone who once tried to kill her dad could be and was redeemed.
  • In season 5, Chozen indirectly helps end the feud between Tory and Sam. When undercover in Cobra Kai, he briefly offers Tory advice in confronting her source of turmoil so she can fight with her full potential. This motivates Tory to work with Kreese to take down Silver and the dojo, and in the process she realizes just how ruthless and immoral Cobra Kai's philosophy is. This eventually leads her to bury the hatchet with Sam by telling her the truth about Silver fixing their match. Once Sam is convinced by Miguel to understand Tory's perspective and give her a chance, they end up working together in the finale. Both Sam and Tory took Chozen's advice to confront and move past their troubles with one another to do the right thing.
• Many have questioned how Rickenberger and Mikey could stomach working together with Robby when he beat both of their asses in Season 2 at the mall and in the school brawl. Maybe they actually simply couldn't, which is at least partially why they quit Cobra Kai after the house fight. Of course, the real out-of-universe reason was because the stunt team switch in Season 4 prevented John Cihangir and Chris Schmidt Jr. from reprising their roles as Rickenberger and Mikey, respectively, but them being unwilling to team up with their enemy Robby could be considered an in-universe reason for why they quit. Getting beaten up during the house fight may also have something to do with it.
• The relationships between Kreese & Silver, and Johnny & Daniel are mirrored with scenarios that play out entirely differently:
  • Kreese meets Silver's girlfriend and instantly makes his dislike known. Daniel and Johnny meet each other's respective wife/girlfriend, and immediately make it clear they think the other did quite well.
  • Kreese is offered tofu at Silver's party and sneers at it, refusing to even try it. Johnny and Daniel have (brought-in homemade) lunch together and try each other's food (Johnny's ham sandwich and Daniel's sushi), thinking it is delicious, even though it is something they usually wouldn't eat.
  • Kreese and Silver fight about the way they tutor their students, and Kreese insists it is his way or the highway. Johnny and Daniel fight about the way they tutor their students and eventually come to an agreement that both will do their thing independently of one another, so the students experience both styles. Not only that, but both of them eventually agree to try out each other's styles themselves and find value in them.
  • Kreese and Silver drink at a bar and Silver insists on buying the most expensive bottle of whiskey, even after Kreese declines. Johnny and Daniel drink at a bar and Johnny has a cheap Coors, even though Daniel has enough money to buy them both something more decent.
  • Kreese is deceived by Silver and arrested, formally breaking their partnership. Johnny and Daniel have a falling out earlier but work together in the end, formally renewing their partnership at the All-Valley Tournament.
  • Kreese and Silver outwardly appear to get along and always be on the same page, but Kreese in private dragoons Terry that he's the head sensei/ranking officer, which eventually culminates in Terry's betrayal. From day one, Daniel and Johnny always make it apparent how much at odds they are with each other even when they're supposedly on the same side, and while this does later on split them for a while, both still took the time to experience one another's karate/lifestyle and use it (some examples include Johnny using a combo of defensive techniques against Silver and Daniel taking a more strict and aggressive approach to disciplining his son). And even after they split, they overall maintain respect for each other and each other's students, such as Johnny allowing Sam to join his training session with Miguel.
  • Kreese and Silver's living situations are extreme opposites; Kreese is homeless (and implied to now be living out of the Cobra Kai dojo) whereas Silver has a luxurious Big Fancy House with a personal chef and several maids. In contrast, Johnny and Daniel have living arrangements that can be seen as more "balanced", or at least do not lean too far to one extreme. Johnny lives in a rather cut-rate apartment complex, though every now and then he can afford some luxuries, while Daniel also lives in a Big Fancy House, though with a more suburban design and location compared to Silver's extravagant bayside residence, which can be seen as Daniel's acknowledgment of his humble origins.
• Despite Ali in Season 3 helping Johnny and Daniel see that they are more alike than they care to admit, Season 4 shows that the differences between them still matter, but they're capable of overcoming them.
• Johnny lionizes Iceman from Top Gun and despises Maverick because he and Iceman occupy the same roles in their respective movies; just like Johnny, Iceman is the blonde hotshot who is already established, and just like Daniel, Maverick is a dark-haired newbie who enters the film, steals his thunder, and gets the girl, drawing Iceman's ire. Just as he leaves out several critical details regarding his rivalry with Daniel, Johnny glosses over Iceman's part in Goose's death, blaming it solely on Maverick. Because Iceman tends to have several salient issues against Maverick, including his tendency to abandon his wingmates to chase glory, Johnny likens himself to Iceman and Daniel to Maverick as part of his Self-Serving Memory. Of course, what he also leaves out is that Iceman and Maverick become friends at the end of the film, also mirroring the relationship between himself and Daniel.

Season 5

• The seeming departure of several of the Cobra Kai students (namely Piper) may seem like a standard case of Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, but with Cobra Kai expanding and opening multiple other dojos, it's also possible they simply transferred to another location that is more convenient for them.
  • Stingray himself is never seen attending classes at the flagship dojo, though other locations are implied to offer adult classes; it's explicitly stated by Hyan-Woo that the recently bought-out Topanga Karate location had them on Wednesdays. It also makes a lot of sense that he wouldn't want to come to the flagship dojo where Silver spends most of his time. Additionally, it's clear that even before being confronted by the kids, he's starting to feel uncomfortable with Cobra Kai and realize how shallow it is.
• Chozen mentoring Tory in "Molé" and being surprisingly sage and gentle with her makes sense when one remembers that he is a martial arts instructor himself, as he mentioned in Season 3. As an instructor, he's probably a pretty good judge of character, and can tell that she's troubled.
• Episode 2 did a great job depicting how MMA fighters can be a difficult opponent for one karateka with just a single fighting style, Johnny in this case. Simply put, as the name suggests mixed martial artists are experts in what is a variety of fighting styles combined into one. MMA is not in itself a better or more dangerous style, but it's different enough that two cagefighters in Hector Salazar's fight club gave Johnny a real fight. Johnny got lucky because underground fight clubs are unsanctioned, and fighters can fight dirty whenever the opportunity arises, which is exactly what Johnny did after Robby tossed him the chili pepper he kept from the pepper-eating contest and using it to blind the cagefighter who pinned him with a headlock, allowing Johnny to get back to his feet and finish the fight.
  • This was also touched on briefly in Season 3, when Mitch was caught in a headlock by Kyler. That particular lock is difficult to get out of, but manageable; however, Cobra Kai really doesn't cover joint or headlocks and how to either apply or get out of them.
  • Johnny had previously dissed BJJ in a Season 1 deleted scene (and similarly dissed MMA here as "grab ass bullshit"). Johnny getting effectively beaten here with a jiu-jutsu style headlock is pretty much Johnny's ignorance karma coming to a chokepoint.
• Daniel really does channel his inner Cobra Kai this season; he constantly tries to preempt Silver early in the season, gets physically aggressive with Stingray, tries to recruit Johnny by appealing to his sense of badass machismo, and suckers Kreese into divulging information on Silver's grand plan for global expansion. Chozen had even imparted to Daniel in order to take down a serpent, they'll need to think like one. Terry may have indeed been right about Daniel having a bit of Cobra Kai in him, but Daniel truly learns this season that he can still be balanced while reconciling with his own inner snake.
  • Robby, Daniel's former student (until they reconcile halfway this season), also demonstrates how sometimes good causes require being a little underhanded. In order to get the money he and his dad need to pay for Johnny's impounded vehicle and resume their search for Miguel, Robby enters a hot chili eating contest and during the final round he swaps his chili for a piece of candy, allowing him to outlast his opponent who caved to the spiciness.
• In the previous season, Daniel made a joke about how the only person he ever saw land a blow on Mr. Miyagi was Anthony (as a baby). At the time, it was played for laughs, but given how much development Anthony's gone through, is it possible this is foreshadowing that he will one day actually be that good at karate?
• After four seasons of arguing, bickering and coming to blows, it’s not only refreshing to see Daniel and Johnny on the same page for most of the season, but also notice how their roles have reversed in their Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic. This is even lampshaded by Daniel midway through the season after he realises he’s gone off the deep end and a pep talk from Johnny.
  • Daniel, who’s usually the more rational and levelheaded of the two, becomes distracted by his obsession with Silver and how to beat him. So much so that he gains a one-track mindset towards how to take down Cobra Kai similar to Season 1, only this time by fully instigating confrontations and “striking first”, something which even in his most Jerkass moments back in the prior seasons, he never did.
  • Johnny, who is usually more Hot-Blooded and reckless, is far less so and isn’t even involved in the main conflict until midway through the season. Fully showcasing the amount of Character Development Johnny’s gone through, as he becomes both a Family Man and a far less angry individual. It’s even more noticeable that Johnny has finally effectively circumvented his Failure Hero status by not only fixing his relationships with both Miguel and Robby, but also starting to clean up his act, including cleaning his apartment, ending his It's All About Me tirade, and even giving Daniel of all people the motivation to clean up HIS act.
• Johnny Lawrence, Chozen Toguchi and Mike Barnes all team up in the last episode to take on Terry Silver. Not only does this mark the collective shifts of all of Daniel’s rivals from Antagonists to Protagonists, but it’s key because Daniel is ultimately the one who defeats Silver once and for all. This may be a Sequel Series where the former villains of the movies are now the good guys but the original protagonist, Daniel LaRusso, the titular Karate Kid, is still The Hero.
• In Episode 5, Johnny takes Robby and Miguel to Olive Garden to talk things out over lunch. Now the brilliance doesn't come from the fact that they went to Olive Garden, and an olive branch symbolizes peace, but when you think back on the Olive Garden restaurant motto, and why Johnny was trying his best to get Robby and Miguel to get along: "When you're here, you're family." In his own way, Johnny was trying to tell Robby and Miguel that they're going to both be new big brothers without revealing that Carmen was pregnant.
• Look at the fight choreography between Robby and Miguel in episode 5: They both use a lot of very similar, almost mirroring moves. It highlights that despite their differences, both are a lot more similar than they (at first) give each other credit for. Nor is this a surprise; Robby started out as a student of Miyagi-Do and then trained with Cobra Kai. Miguel started out with Johnny's Cobra Kai/Eagle Fang and later became one of Daniel's top students. Just as with so many other things, their martial arts journeys are practically mirrors of each other.
• Amanda has always had shades of being something of a Social Climber. This now comes off as Harsher in Hindsight as Season 4 revealed that she once assaulted her teacher's vehicle with a baseball bat (while the teacher was in it) and as this season shows when Amanda briefly returns to Ohio, she's still stigmatized for this misdemeanor by some of her peers. Rather like Terry Silver prior to his rejoining of Cobra Kai, Amanda seems set on distancing herself from her delinquent past by proving to everyone (and most importantly herself) that she can be an actual member of respected society.
• Why didn't Mike Barnes continue competitive karate after The Karate Kid Part III? Besides losing income when Silver's Cobra Kai franchise plan collapsed, the ban on Cobra Kai from competing in the All Valley had far-reaching effects. Sports sanctioning bodies share information about bans and troublemakers. The All Valley most likely warned other bodies in California and even nationwide about Cobra Kai; Barnes was probably banned from all events or at least warned against competing. Even if he applied to another dojo just to train, it's doubtful most schools would have accepted him as long as he kept acting like a bully.
• A meta example. In Kreese's prison fight at the end of episode 6, having him appear as his younger self not only represents how Kreese feels rejuvenated by fighting back against his bullies and taking control of his life even within prison, but provides an excuse to film with a younger actor more capable of performing a convincing fight scene than the 76-year-old Martin Kove.
• The way in which the Miyagi-Fang students are defeated in Chozen's egg training demonstrates their personal flaws in defense (and in life), which reinforces the notion that they're weakest when fighting separately. When united, they can compensate for each others' weaknesses.
  • Demetri puts all of his faith in an intellectual solution, carefully designing an elaborate covering for his egg. He's so caught up in the idea that he doesn't consider whether it would be practical in an actual fight. Not to mention being too busy bragging about it to Miguel and Eli until it was too late (obviously to make himself seem more secure than he actually is). Chozen easily pierces it with a throwing knife.
  • While Chris is an excellent defensive fighter, here he's a bit too defensive; he's put himself in a situation where he can't counterattack. Mitch tries to sit on his egg, which goes as well as you would expect. Chozen tells them that "birds of a feather must flock together." If they had tried to work together, they might have succeeded. As it is, they both fail on their own. It also hints at Mitch's lack of connection to his fellow students.
  • Bert and Nathaniel are both intelligent, but like Demetri, rely too much on their intellects and are too overconfident. If they'd paid more attention to their surroundings rather than playing with their eggs, Chozen would not have been able to sneak up on them (and standing on the wooden platform, they would have been in the perfect place for a wheel technique).
  • Robby literally buries his egg, the way he often buries his problems rather than facing them. As with his problems, the egg doesn't stay buried long.
  • Hawk tries to confront Chozen head on, trusting in his fighting ability. He doesn't consider that he's facing an opponent who's a) much more experienced, and b) armed with a variety of weapons. This echoes his overcompensating efforts to be seen as tough and dangerous, which have frequently gotten him in trouble. He quickly finds himself completely outmatched.
  • Anthony runs and hides instead of trying to face the problem head-on, and immediately surrenders when Chozen finds him.
  • Miguel gets distracted by a conversation with Sam, and doesn't even make a real effort to protect the egg, just as issues in his personal life have consistently prevented him from reaching his full potential.
  • Sam tries to heroically defend her egg by telling Chozen he'll have to go through her, only to learn that he'd already stolen it from her bag. Sam has often tried to solve problems with direct conflict, not considering that others are willing to resort to tricks and duplicity to beat her.
• While Anthony coming up with the successful plan for the Miyagi-Fangs to take on Chozen together may seem like a shock (especially considering that he is very inexperienced with karate and has been nothing but useless in the series prior to Season 4), it actually makes sense when one remembers how he and his Gang of Bullies were taken out by Kenny in the West Valley Middle School library. Sure, being addicted to Dungeon Lord did help, but he clearly must have remembered how Kenny was smart enough to have Anthony's gang split up for the former to easily take them out one at a time. Going through the same thing in the Miyagi-Do dojo with Chozen targeting him and the Miyagi-Fangs clearly felt like deja vu, which is why, from past experience, it prompted Anthony to suggest his teammates to take on their opponent as one.
• Chozen's comment that Cobra Kai does not have the same focus on teamwork as Miyagi-Fang may seem odd, given that Kreese (and to a lesser extent, Silver) emphasized military-style teamwork. However, in Cobra Kai, Kreese and Silver regularly have the students beating one another up in training. On the other hand, Johnny, Daniel, and Chozen's exercises often have the students working in pairs or groups, and when they spar, there's no "punish the loser" mentality. It's no surprise that the latter school has a stronger feeling of cohesion and loyalty to one another.
  • Chozen's teamwork lesson is directly counterpointed by Silver and Kim Da-Eun's teamwork lesson in the same episode. Chozen teaches his students to work together as a cohesive unit, protecting and defending each other and their objective, trusting one another, and complementing each other's strengths and weaknesses. Meanwhile, Silver and Kim's lessons focus on "sacrificing pawns" for victory. Kenny passes when he goads Kyler into a fight, then uses Kyler first as a weapon against the sensei they're supposed to be fighting, then as a springboard to kick that sensei in the face. Tory fails by taking the hit for Devon instead of capitalizing on Kim's focus on finishing Devon to attack. Which also shows that the balance Tory started to learn last season, from Robby's second-hand Miyagi-Do lessons and Amanda's influence and assistance, not to mention Chozen's lesson at the beginning of this season, is still helping her grow for the better.
  • And why do Silver and Kreese believe in culling the weak and sacrificing pawns for victory? Well, it's what Captain Turner would have wanted...
• In Episode 8, Rocky IV was used to highlight the different training methods between the dojos (old-school VS high-tech), just like how Rocky and Drago trained during the movie. In addition, it was used to show how Daniel and Johnny managed to change and unite under one banner, alluding to Rocky's speech of how everyone can change. Similarities with the movie can also be applied in Episode 10.
  • Both Rocky and Daniel, the main characters of their respective franchises, end up going to the home-turfs of the villains to settle the score. The final battle of the movie took place in Russia, Drago's home-turf, while the final battle of the season takes place in the main Cobra Kai Dojo, Silver's home-turf.
  • By the end of the movie/episode, the villain is disgraced, defeated and loses his supporters. Drago loses the support of his fellow Russians while Silver loses the support of his Cobra Kai students.
• Silver deleting the video of him assaulting Stingray actually is a good thing in the long run. For the Cobra Kai students, few if any of whom are friendly with Stingray personally, watching their teacher beat down a guy they barely know and don't particularly like wouldn't be nearly as emotionally damaging as watching him admit that he bribed the referee and therefore doesn't think that they can be champions by themselves. Plus, with Stingray's revised testimony, Silver is convicted anyway.
• Kreese probably isn't going to be in a position to resume a villainous scheme any time soon, realistically. Breaking out of jail is a crime in and of itself, add to the fact that to do so he faked his own death (again!), assaulted two guards and a doctor, and stole the doctor's clothes and his psychiatrist's security badge, and if he's caught he'll go down for quite some time, even though Silver's arrest and Stingray's amended statement means he'll be cleared of the charges he was serving time for in the first place. If he'd just waited two more days, he'd have been free and clear.
• In the finale, the rest of Miyagi-Fang are held up to arrive as backup because they had to wait for Mitch aka "Penis-Breath" to get dressed. At first, it seems like it was because they were all called up late at night and Mitch needed to dress for the cold, but he was actually busy warning Cobra Kai. Also, he *was* busy getting dressed, that is putting on his Cobra Kai shirt, so it was technically true.
• In the final standoff between Daniel and Silver, Daniel can be seen using different techniques from across all three dojos, signifying that he has finally overcome his demons and achieved balance within himself. Moreover, each technique he uses to systematically defeat Silver corresponds to the three principles of the Quick Silver method he learned while training under the Cobra Kai master during the events of The Karate Kid Part III.
  • "A man can't stand, he can't fight" - Daniel uses the armlock Silver used on him in episode 5 to bring Silver to his knees.
  • "A man can't breathe, he can't fight" - Daniel uses the Screaming Eagle, an Eagle Fang move taught to him by Johnny (his former rival turned friend), to knock the wind out of Silver.
  • "A man can't see, he can't fight" - Daniel uses the Crane Kick, the iconic Miyagi-Do move that Mr. Miyagi taught him and the same move that Silver insulted back in The Karate Kid Part III, to kick Silver in the face, finishing him. Silver was also metaphorically blind before the fight even began; he was already experiencing a manic spiral after seeing his students effectively lose their faith with him for buying their All-Valley victory and despite the Crane Kick indeed being perfectly blockable, Silver was so lost in his madness (as shown when he grabbed a trophy off the wall to use as a weapon) that he was virtually beaten the moment Daniel assumed the Crane stance.
• Daniel also wins his and Silver's fight without taking a single hit, just like his old mentor, which solidifies him as the new generation's Mr. Miyagi. It's taken him a long time and a lot of struggles, but he has achieved the balance and skill to truly step into his mentor's shoes.
• Silver loses all respect from his Cobra Kai students when they see proof that he cheated to win the All-Valley and quit en masse, even the bullies like Kyler. Cobra Kai's promise and by extension Silver's was to both to make the kids strong and to make them champions. If he needs to cheat to win, then he's doing neither.
  • They also could never be sure their accomplishments — future or past — would mean anything or if they were bought. It's hard to be proud of reaching your athletic goals if you are not certain they were just bought.
  • It also shows that for all his talk, Silver doesn't have any real faith in his students. He doesn't believe they really are the best of the best, that he can train them to dominate all others in the field of karate, if he has to buy victories even as "an insurance policy." How seriously can you take someone who tells you to believe in yourself when they've proven they don't believe in you?
  • Additionally, not only did Daniel defeat Silver, he crushed him. Daniel never even takes a single hit, while methodically blocking, parrying, and disabling Silver. Silver no doubt told his students that Miyagi-Do is weak, pacifistic, useless in a real fight, etc. However, his students just saw how effective the combined dojo was in the brawl, and now they watched a master of Miyagi-Do comprehensively defeating the guy they've been conditioned to think is a total badass without breaking much of a sweat. Given that, it's no wonder they lose all respect for him.
  • Putting the cherry on top, Silver tells his students about Johnny, Mike, and Chozen invading his home and attacking him as a way of slandering his enemies. However, given that many of the students he's talking to previously did exactly the same thing back at the end of Season 3, this clearly is not going to seem like a bad thing to them—indeed, especially given how disheveled Silver is, it may even reinforce the previous idea that Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang is more badass than Silver likes to paint them. Extra Fridge Brilliance comes from the fact that Silver didn't even join Cobra Kai until about three months after the house invasion, so he may not even know about it.
• Even with Hollywood Law, it's still a bit of a stretch to see Terry Silver as the only one being arrested after the assault on the Cobra Kai dojo. However, the reason Silver is even being arrested is because Stingray came clean about who actually assaulted him and for the bribery at the All-Valley Tournament (and possibly Sekai Taikai). All the students walked out on him because of the latter, but what's not to say that they decided to further screw Silver over by giving false statements about what just happened so Terry is the only one that has to deal with "legal problems"?
  • They wouldn't even need to make up lies about Silver. If they were to reveal the truth about the cultish torture several of them were subject to, Terry could get charged for child abuse, regardless of Cobra Kai being considered a sports dojo. In fact, Tory on her own could give the police enough child abuse material to put Silver (and Kim, for that matter) away for years, especially when earlier that day they coerced her to break a solid stone tablet while holding her hostage until she finished.
  • Also, the fact that Terry didn't just call the police when three men invaded his home was handwaved by the notion that he wanted to be able to kill them without facing legal consequences. However, informed viewers pointed out that the painting Mike took after the fight (Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee) was stolen in 1990 and is still missing. In addition to making things easier on Mike (since he can simply turn it in for the reward), this helps to explain the absence of police. With a famously stolen painting on display in his home, whose to say there aren't other stolen artifacts in his house? Of course Terry would be understandably hesitant to have the cops come barging in.
  • Additionally, he probably wouldn't want the police looking too closely at Mike's store burning down, and since Mike himself is there to accuse him...
  • Even though Silver will most likely be able to use his money and connections to avoid jailtime or any long-term legal issues, his public reputation won't be recovering anytime soon. Silver put a lot of stock in maintaining a squeaky-clean image, but with the sudden exodus of a whole dojo of students who will more than likely spread the word of Silver's fraudulence, people are probably going to be avoid associating with him for a long while, including potential business associates and patrons, and maybe even some of Terry's old affluent acquaintances. Even if he can buy his way around the legal system, he won't be able to buy back his reputation with the people that once looked at him with admiration and respect.
• While it is highly unlikely that we've seen the last of Terry Silver, Season 5 in some ways comprehensively concludes his story. Ever since the Vietnam War, Terry has worked to overcome what he perceived as his greatest weakness: Fear. Though he was a soldier, he was still very much afraid to die, and when he is initially chosen to fight over the snake pit against Captain Turner, he could only cower and whimper in fear for his life until Kreese volunteered to take his place. In the years following his discharge, Silver tried to cope with his trauma using cocaine and immersing himself in his business, even adopting the loudmouth personality of his fallen comrade (whose death he personally felt responsible for), Ponytail, as a way to further distance himself from the cowardly soldier he was during his service. When he stares down Chozen in their final bout, the latter having Silver at his mercy and his sais trained ready to finish him, Silver solemnly declares that he was meant to die in battle. It was this moment he truly shed his weakness, facing seeming certain death with dignity as Terry Silver, no longer the cowering soldier known as "Twig."
• The German Sekai Taikai ambassador cites Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang's unconventional training methods and underdog determination as justification for allowing them into the Sekai Taikai, which should come as no surprise given the Rocky films he's a fan of.
• During the Sekai Taikai tryouts, Robby is seen training Anthony before being confronted by Kenny. Not only this is a role-reversal from season 4 where it is Robby who introduces Kenny to learning karate, and by extension, Cobra Kai's ruthless philosophy. For Robby, coaching Anthony was his way of making amends with the younger LaRusso after he was beaten to a pulp by Kenny during the All-Valley.
• During Kreese's therapy session, he is confronted by people (in place of the prison therapist) who have had an impact on his life, which symbolizes that due to his sociopathic behavior and being stuck in the mindset of war, he's unable to form meaningful, lasting relationships, and if anything, takes them for granted.
  • Seeing Betsy in front of him shows that he is still unable to move on from her death.
  • When he sees Captain Turner, Kreese has nothing but contempt for his former commanding officer for pushing him over the edge while in captivity during the Vietnam War. Kreese states he turned his anger into strength, something that he encouraged in his students.
  • When he is taunted by Terry Silver, it shows that even if they are partners-in-crime, Kreese did not reciprocate that same loyalty Terry had towards him ever since Vietnam. Even after re-recruiting him back to Cobra Kai, Kreese's domineering behavior towards Silver pushes the latter off the deep end, leading to his betrayal at the end of season 4. Also, Silver resents Kreese for favoring Johnny as Cobra Kai's top student.
  • Seeing Tory, the only person who Kreese saw as a daughter, calling him out for not regretting his actions is the result of him using her as a pawn to take down Silver. Even when Kreese gives up his revenge plot and encourages Tory to participate in the Sekai Taikai, the damage has already been done.
  • And finally, Johnny, both the young and present versions of Kreese's former top student. Young Johnny calls out Kreese for molding his students to be like him, a bully who tries to drown other people in his own personal issues.
• Mitch's reasons for betraying Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang get even stupider when one thinks about it.
  • First off, he could've at least just told the Miyagi-Fangs, particularly Bert, not to call him "Penis Breath" if he were ever so tired of that name. Especially since it's out of endearment and misunderstanding, not maliciousness (unlike Kyler). In fact, back in Season 3, he actually implied that he was okay with his friends using the term ("You can't call me Penis Breath. Only they can"). If he's changed his mind, he can report this to his senseis if this gets out of hand. Sure, maybe Johnny might not listen as a means to toughen him up (or could he...as Character Development says otherwise), but Daniel or Chozen are others that he could also open up to. Both of them would definitely stamp down on the hassling.
  • He also claims it was because they don't have a roof, swag, or "any chicks" (other than Sam). However, both dojos actually do have roofs/roofed structures, although the Miyagi-Dos admittedly usually do their martial arts training outside. Which, if Mitch were a little more insightful, he might realize is very good training for the real world—sometimes, you do have to fight in extreme outdoors conditions.
  • Just the previous episode, the combined dojo was able to get a whole bunch of hot girls to party with them, not to mention that Demetri, Miguel, and Eli are dating three of the hottest girls in the school. And this is prior to Tory and Devon defecting from Cobra Kai to the Miyagi-Fangs in the Final Battle.
    • Also, the most popular females from the school (Yasmine, Sam, and Moon) ended up with Miyagi-Do/Eagle-Fang students (Demetri, Miguel, and Hawk respectively). What's more, all of them (even Yasmine) ended up with said guys because they proved to be not only badass, but also gentle and nice, especially after their Character Development. Mitch is both terrible at pick-up lines and obnoxious, meaning that even changing dojos might have not helped him at all at.
    • It bears reiterating that Mitch is flat-out too socially awkward to talk to women, explicitly shown when he tries to explain the Sekai Taikai to a group of girls coming to Miguel and Robby's party, even though they have no idea what that is and only showed up because Moon invited them to something fun. Hawk is very well aware of this, and even Miguel manages to charm one of them! Earlier in the episode when the Miyagi-Fangs are at Silver's flagship dojo, Mitch expressing admiration towards a trio of female Cobra Kai students comes off as very creepy — and something the girls (and Bert) are clearly not amused by.
    • Worse of all, Demetri is also nerdy and often pretty awkward himself. However, his newfound confidence in himself not only helped him a lot in his life as a whole, but Demetri remains very true to himself in a healthier way. Mitch tries too hard to come up as a nice pick for women and ends up looking like an idiot. Demetri might not be quite the casanova in the traditional sense, but because he doesn't pretend to be someone he's not, he instead becomes Endearingly Dorky. Demetri took the philosophy of Miyagi-Do to simply become a better version of himself, which is the reason why his love life has dramatically improved, as did the equally shy Eli (albeit after having to cut back on the Hawk persona). Mitch, however, is so superficial he can't even see that and thinks cheap swag would suffice.
  • Back in Season 4, Daniel mentioned being able to choose the flavor of Gatorade for the dojo as a reward, not to mention the T-shirts that Johnny gave out in Season 3, and just a couple of days before Mitch's betrayal was the pizza party at the LaRusso's.
    • And at the Pizza Party, Mitch complains that the Miyagi-Fangs don't have enough students compared to the Cobra Kais. That's really the point of the Miyagi-Fangs, especially as Chozen spells it out for him during one of his lessons: they don't need a franchise of dojos with hundreds of students to be that good. Case-in-point, all of Cobra Kai's fighters are pretty much Mooks at this point, with their best being Kyler, Devon, Kenny, and Tory, the last of whom is already feeling disillusioned by the dojo and eventually defects to the Miyagi-Fangs herself. The Miyagi-Fangs have two All-Valley champs (Miguel and Eli) and two All-Valley runner-ups (Robby and Sam) in their arsenal, in addition to a recent All-Valley semifinalist (Demetri). Not to mention that Chris took out Mitch himself with little effort twice in the school and arcade fights. They're pretty much stacked compared to the other dojo with only Tory as the All-Valley champion (granted, with Silver's bribery), whereas the rest of the three aforementioned best fighters (Kyler, Kenny, Devon) were curb-stomped in the quarterfinals (with Devon being curb-stomped again during the Sekai Taikai qualifier).
  • Aside from the fact that he clearly never asked his fellow students not to call him Penis Breath, did Mitch really think Kyler and his crew weren't going to be nasty to him? Especially since Kyler was the one that got him kicked out of Kreese's Cobra Kai when he showed absolutely no mercy to Mitch during a sparring session.
  • When all is said and done, Mitch is nothing more that a petty, Ungrateful Bastard who clings on to what he perceives as better out of personal greed. Sure, Silver's Cobra Kai may have won the tournament (albeit through Silver's cheating), has the nicer facilities, more female students, swag sponsored by Champion sportswear, and more food options for Mitch to hunker down on it. But the students in the Miyagi-Fangs still value him as a close friend — namely Chris, Bert, and Nathaniel, more so than the likes of Kyler and Kenny. And unlike Silver, the three Miyagi-Fang senseis don't need to buy their way to victory when it comes to a competition, as shown when they also qualify for the Sekai-Taikai, Johnny's Cobra Kai winning the All-Valley despite cheap shots from his students (though it was all legalized), and Hawk winning the boys' division for Miyagi-Do in the 51st All-Valley despite Robby having the leniency advantage. Additionally, almost every large-scale brawl between the dojos so far (Season 2's mall and school fight, Season 3's house fight, Season 4's prom fight) has ended in a draw or victory for the Miyagi-Dos/Miyagi-Fangs, with the one exception being the arcade fight in Season 3, and that would almost certainly have been a draw or victory if not for Sam's panic attack. Mitch being left writhing on the ground during the climactic moments of the Final Battle in Silver's flagship dojo and himself feeling betrayed by Silver's dishonesty were nothing short of well-deserved.
  • And to add insult to the injury, Mitch gets to gladly watch his old sensei, Daniel, deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to his new sensei, Silver (solidifying who was the better teacher). So much for the facilities, snacks, smoothies, swag, girls, and fake people whom he perceived don't call him names like "Penis Breath."
• What makes the above even more jarring is how far less sympathetic Mitch comes off as when he betrays the Miyagi-Fangs compared to a good number of karatekas who made a Heel–Face Turn (or Face–Heel Turn) with their dojos.
  • With Miguel: Even prior to his fall and paralysis, he was already questioning Kreese's way of teaching — as it contrasted with what Johnny had taught him after Miguel himself became a brute in the All-Valley that resulted in him losing his relationship with Sam and being punished by Johnny during the next class. As such, when he recovers from his paralysis, the impact Johnny had on his life was enough for Miguel to remain loyal to him, not Cobra Kai, as he helps Johnny form Eagle Fang and distances from Cobra Kai entirely. Mitch never questioned Kreese's ruthless teachings and only joins Eagle Fang because it was a convenient dojo for him to continue training after Kreese kicked him out. Like everyone else down the list, Miguel remains loyal to his own dojo even as Cobra Kai underwent numerous changes with their senseis. Mitch, on the other hand, uses Silver's open-mindedness as an opportunity to re-join Cobra Kai when given the chance.
  • With Hawk: He was a meek, bullied student before he joined karate — but the trauma he endured from past bullying basically had him embrace the "No Mercy" mindset and become a bully himself. Meanwhile, Mitch doesn't have enough backstory to convince the audience he didn't just join Cobra Kai because it was getting popular. And unlike Hawk (and many other students), who defected out of disillusionment with the dojo and their own actions, Mitch was simply kicked out due to Kreese's Darwinistic mindset when it comes to his students. Which meant even if the more open-minded Silver took over the dojo, the dark atmosphere coming out of Cobra Kai is enough for Hawk to keep his distance from the place, whereas Mitch would use this as an opportunity to be welcomed back with open arms. Hawk also made the effort to atone for his past misdeeds by designing the sparring deck, rejoining Miyagi-Do after having been humiliated, and winning the boys' tournament; Mitch did not show any such level of dedication.
  • With Tory: It was mainly due to the fact that she was also The Mole, albeit to the Miyagi-Fangs. Given that almost all of the current Miyagi-Fang students were defectors from Cobra Kai, they know how much moral strength it takes to break free of Kreese and Silver — not unlike Tory herself. As a matter of fact, Tory defecting from Cobra Kai was far more justified than Mitch defecting from the Miyagi-Fangs since she basically spent the entire season feeling cheated on with her undeserved victory, dumped by her boyfriend over the misunderstanding that she's brainwashed, and physically abused by Silver's Dragon.
  • With Robby: He joined due to having very understandable issues with Daniel, Sam, and Johnny, and being preyed upon by Kreese, an expert manipulator, when he was at his lowest point. Even at first, Robby was distrusting of Kreese when the latter visited him in juvie due to his relationship with his former sensei (Daniel) going south; he only joined because he felt he had nowhere else to go and wanted to get back at Daniel, Sam, and Johnny. However, even he had his moral values, unlike his Cobra Kai teammates. Mitch’s motives to join Cobra Kai are far pettier than being turned into juvie, cheated on, and abandoned for years.
    • Additionally, the contrast between what Robby and Mitch actually did as members of Cobra Kai and afterwards is very revealing. During Kreese's tenure as Cobra Kai sensei, he wanted a male champion, and Robby has the skillset and All-Valley experience that made it convenient for him (especially after Hawk defects in the LaRusso house fight); Mitch, on the other hand, is nothing more than a Mook with a good set of lines that isn't even needed in Cobra Kai's expanding franchise (especially given that Kenny is the male champion and Kyler previously beat his ass during a trial exercise), and who is never seen winning a fight by himself. When Robby joined Cobra Kai as their male champion, he made good use of their time there by kicking everyone's ass without a single fair hit, teaching them Miyagi-Do moves (which contributes heavily in the tournament), successfully recruiting Kenny despite Kreese's doubts, and making it to the finals — nearly defeating Eli in Sudden Death. What did Mitch do after he revealed his allegiance? Nothing, except leaking the Miyagi-Fangs' infiltration plan (which only ended up backfiring, as it meant all the Cobra Kais were there to watch the video clip and then see their sensei get trounced by Daniel), whining about being called Penis Breath, ranting about how the Miyagi-Fangs don't have much compared to Cobra Kai, and ultimately lying on the floor after losing to Chris. After rejoining Miyagi-Do, Robby mentored Anthony and helped encourage Daniel to lead the fight against Silver; Mitch only went along with whatever the team was doing. What really underlines the difference is that Robby walked back into Cobra Kai and announced that he should've taken everyone else with him; Mitch walked back into Cobra Kai and attempted to rejoin the gang.
  • With Devon: It's an interesting case. After Eagle Fang closes down due to Johnny honoring his bet with Kreese, she needs to find another dojo to train — as such, Topanga becomes available to her. However, Topanga is taken over by Silver's Cobra Kai, and Devon ends up with sticking around out of pragmatic reasons of wanting a dojo to continue training in. She didn't join the plot until midway through Season 4, so unlike Mitch, she didn't know how toxic Cobra Kai could be. Then the Final Battle happens, and Devon sees just how fucked up the dojo is when she witnesses Sensei Kim abusing Tory, prompting her to make a moral decision to switch sides at the last minute. Does Mitch do that when his (former) friends are in trouble? No, he does not.
  • With Bert: Ultimately being Mitch's Foil. Both joined Cobra Kai when it gained popularity among the West Valley High School students, but unlike Mitch (who gleefully went along with their antics against the Miyagi-Dos), Bert was always the Token Good Teammate — and the only time he show a glimmer of antagonism as a student of the dojo is his rivalry with Nathaniel (who ironically happens to be even more ruthless than him by comparison). The distinctions are made clear with their expulsions from the dojo, courtesy of Kreese after his takeover: Kreese kicks Bert out of Cobra Kai because of the compassion he had for Clarence when the psychopathic sensei wanted the hamster eaten; Kreese kicks Mitch out of Cobra Kai simply because he wasn't good enough to defeat Kyler. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out who had better morals of the two, and how Bert came to the realization that Cobra Kai is messed up in every way — even when the more open-minded Silver takes over.
  • With Stingray: Who also joined the dojo as it was popular during Johnny's tenure as Cobra Kai's sensei. Both men remained loyal to the dojo and desired to come back, even as they were kicked out by Kreese but was re-accepted in the dojo by Silver. However, Stingray was badly beaten by the mad sensei and used as an Unwitting Pawn to frame Kreese — as such despite being accepted back in and given numerous luxuries as a "reward", Stingray eventually gives in to his moral conscience and rightfully aligns with the Miyagi-Fangs in the Final Battle against Silver's Cobra Kai. Even before that, the fact that he's never seen or mentioned as having done any training during Season Five may imply that he was already coming to regret his alliance with them. Whereas Mitch on the other hand defects to Cobra Kai just because he couldn't stand a petty nickname, and openly desired all the goodies despite the Cobra Kais treating him far worse than any of the Miyagi-Fangs. Even Stingray recognized how hollow the swag was; Mitch never did.
  • To sum up: With the exception of Chozen, Sam, Anthony, and Demetri (who only stayed for one lesson but quit before being exposed to any actual toxic influence from it), every one of the Miyagi-Fang students and teachers has at some point defected from Cobra Kai, either being expelled by Kreese or leaving voluntarily. With those four, each of them has seen secondhand how toxic the dojo can be—Sam and Anthony regarding their father's personal experience and being a target from their respective rivals (Tory for Sam, Kenny for Anthony), not to mention how Sam watched Miguel go from a sweet-natured kid to an obnoxious bully. Demetri saw his best friend Eli turned into a vicious brute and got punched in the face by Kreese. Meanwhile, Chozen is very familiar with the Way of the Fist, enough to recognize it after only moments of watching Silver spar, heavily implying that he's seen Kim Sun-Yung's teachings offscreen. None of them ever showed any interest in joining Cobra Kai. Of the entire cast, the only ones who ever experienced Cobra Kai firsthand, left/were forced out, and then wanted to return were Johnny, Stingray, and Mitch. Ever since the beginning of the series, Johnny has made a deliberate effort to redeem and improve Cobra Kai, which eventually culminated in the creation of Eagle Fang. As noted above, Stingray rapidly sees the problems with Cobra Kai and throws his lot in with Miyagi-Fang when given the chance. Mitch makes it clear that he doesn't recognize any of the problems with Cobra Kai, and makes no effort to change anything other than which side he fights for.
• In the second episode, Chozen easily takes down the six "best senseis in the valley" in less than two minutes, often with a single hit each... Because his opponents are trained in sports Karate while Chozen is trained in the original combat art. Even if they were trained for full contact sports Karate, they don't have the conditioning and habits to take on an opponent using the real thing, so they fall to Chozen's illegal techniques. The punches to the face are especially evident:
  • In American rules, only light contact is allowed to the face, so when Chozen hits them there with full force, they're caught by surprise and can't defend.
  • One of the reasons punches to the face are allowed only with light contact is that the small bones in the hand are far easier to break than a skull, but earlier in the episode in a flashback, we saw that Chozen has been undergoing Iron Palm training and reinforced his hands since he was a child.
  • These teachers are also eager to get the reward money promised by Silver. Had they rushed Chozen as a group, he would've had a fair amount of difficulty, but since each of them wants the job and the bounty, they only attack him one or two at a time.
  • Most Americans start martial arts training around ten years old or later. Even those who start younger often come and train for two or three hours a week and then have school, sports, other extra-curricular activities, etc the rest of the day. Chozen, having been raised by Sato, has probably been training and conditioning himself for at least an hour or two every day since he was just a few years old.
  • For that matter, Silver claimed that they were the "best senseis in the Valley," but never specified whether he meant "best" as in "best combatants," or "best teachers." If the latter (which would make more sense), while no doubt they are competent fighters, they would probably spend most of their time mentoring students rather than working on seriously advancing their combat skills. Meanwhile, Chozen grew up working and training with soldiers, and learning from Sato, meaning that he's forced to stay at a higher level of skill. And of course, there's a world of difference between training to defend against someone in the street and training to defend against a martial artist of Chozen's level.
• Kim immediately recognizes Chozen, but at first thinks Johnny is Daniel. This makes sense for two reasons. First of all, it would make a lot of sense if Chozen is fairly well known in the martial arts community for his mastery of Miyagi-Do, particularly if he's still teaching soldiers in his dojo. Secondly, Silver would most likely have briefed her on Daniel and Chozen... but since Johnny just re-entered the fight, he's had no reason to tell her about him!
• Kim's favoritism of fellow Asians such as Devon while sneering at Cobra Kai's American students like Tory may also be from the abilities of her hand-picked senseis she brought with her as seen by their performance in the Season 5 finale fight. Senseis Odell and Bacaria go down quite fast compared to Suk-Chin and especially Hyan-Woo and Min-Jun, the latter two being arguably the best given that they both suffer the most punishment and actually would have defeated Johnny if it weren't for Mike Barnes's interference (twice in the case of Min-Jun no less!)
• Hyan-Woo gave Johnny and Chozen a hard time by himself when he first fought them, yet at Silver's house, Johnny and Chozen take on him and the rest of The Fist by themselves in spite of being as drunk as they come... Or rather because they're drunk. Their intoxicated state means they aren't thinking straight and their timing and movements are off, which is constantly throwing the Fist fighters off.
  • It's also worth remembering that Johnny was originally trained in the Way of the Fist, and Chozen is familiar enough with the style to recognize it almost immediately and demonstrate it to Daniel and Silver. However, neither Silver, Kim, nor any of their students have ever trained in Miyagi-Do or Eagle Fang. Thus, Johnny and Chozen are at an advantage in that they know their opponents' style, but their opponents aren't familiar with theirs.
    • Why, then, did they have so much trouble with Hyan-Woo? At that point, Johnny and Chozen didn't realize just how skilled he was. Not only that, but they weren't yet familiar with each other's fighting styles. It can clearly be seen that they're making an effort not to get in each other's way, but they're not yet synchronized enough to work together, allowing him to fight them one at a time for the most part. During the fight at Silver's house, there are enough opposing Fist teachers that they can each fight a few without getting in each other's way. Plus they've spent weeks working and training together.
• Kyler's only Character Development and redeeming quality of not tolerating cheating in sports makes sense as he's a wrestler at school. It's implied he has been training in the sport for most of his life, so of course he would have such a virtue.
  • However, it's unclear how much of Kyler's decision was due to anger at Silver's cheating, and how much due to the fact that Silver, who he had been conditioned to think of as the alpha and a total badass, was curb-stomped by Daniel. This would also be in character for him: Kyler always likes to think of himself as being a badass, and when he's following someone else's orders, it's because he perceives them as being more badass than himself (Kreese, Tory, Robby, Silver) and enjoys basking in their reflected glory. At the beginning of the fight, he's seen smirking in anticipation, but then watches his sensei get crushed without landing a single hit. This made him feel that Silver was not as badass as he likes to seem, and thus is unworthy of his loyalty.
  • As noted above, Kyler is a follower. He'll go with whomever seems "cool" and "badass." Earlier in the season, he was conditioned to respect Kenny as a "badass" when the latter used him to win the competition. So when Kenny walks out in disgust, Kyler (being the follower he is) does the same.
• Miguel and Demetri accompanying Hawk to the tattoo parlor might seem a bit trivial with Hawk wanting an entourage to see his new tattoo, but it makes a lot of sense given what happened in Season 4. Hawk got ambushed and overpowered by two Cobra Kai Mooks and Kyler as there was a small space to fight in and even if he did win, he would have to deal with Robby and Tory at the same time. With Cobra Kai expanding their numbers, it would make sense for Hawk to want Miguel and Demetri as backup in case they come back to ambush him again in greater numbers. It's also a great example of "show, don't tell" by showing not only that the Binary Brothers are completely comfortable with each other again, but also that their friend-group has truly expanded by having Eli be close to both.
• Demetri once again showcases him becoming The Heart of the group. When Eli and Robby were arguing about how each other had commited slights to each other in the past, Demetri steps up and tells them than as "ex-assholes" they need to put that grudge behind to focus in the present day. Keep on mind, one of the slights Robby mentions is Eli breaking Demetri's arm, which is something that left everybody (even Eli) terribly shaken. By Demetri being willing to put said event aside, he essentially tells to his fellow ex Cobra Kai's: "Look, I've already forgiven you for your mistakes. So let's now put our differences aside and focus in our next mission". It's easy to assue that if Demetri was willing to forgive said event, Robby and Eli could be capable of forgive each other as well.
• In his earlier days, Kreese put all his hopes in Johnny, even becoming emotionally attached... Because he was a natural athlete. Athletically talented kids tend to go for the popular sports, not Karate and other martial arts, and one enrolling at Cobra Kai was completely unexpected.
• Kim Da-Eun's Politically Incorrect Villain status of looking down on non-Koreans might be from the performance of The Fist during the Season 5 final fight at Silver's estate. Odell and Bacaria get taken down by Johnny alone while Morozov was not even present for the final fight. On the other hand, Hyan-Woo took both Johnny and Chozen to defeat at the Topanga Karate Dojo fight while Min-Jun took a beating from Mike Barnes and then a beating from Johnny and still managed to stay standing alongside Hyan-Woo to finish off Johnny. If it weren't for Mike Barnes waking up to finish them off, Hyan-Woo and Min-Jun would have defeated Johnny, despite taking a huge beating themselves. An exception to this is Suk-Chin who goes down quite fast by Johnny.

Fridge Horror

General

• William Zabka has said that when Johnny lost to Daniel in the 1984 All-Valley tournament, he initially felt liberated. He's good sport about it when presenting Daniel with the winner's trophy. But then, Kreese immediately turned on him because of it. When we see him decades later, his memories of that fight with Daniel seem different. He remembers himself laying on the canvas instead of crawling as he did in the movie, and he doesn't seem to recall congratulating Daniel, or at least it's not an integral part of the memory. Given that Johnny looked up to Kreese as a father figure, because he never knew who his real father was and his stepfather was an arrogant bully who didn't care about him, Kreese trying to kill him likely reinterpreted the loss to Daniel in Johnny's mind. Because Kreese thought the loss was shameful, it became shameful in Johnny's mind too. Which speaks volumes of how great influence Kreese as the (abusive) father figure has on Johnny, even after their breakup. And why he ignores the warnings of the OG Cobras and Daniel about Kreese, people who grew up with stable home lives and thus can see the toxic influence.
  • Kreese made Johnny sweep the leg, which he did, injuring Daniel, thus forcing Daniel to do the crane kick on the opposite leg...and Daniel still beat Johnny. Animals (and humans) are more dangerous when wounded, and if Kreese was such a genius fighter, that would’ve been obvious, especially from an unknown opponent. It’s basically Kreese’s fault Johnny lost.
  • Growing up with no positive father figures in his life almost certainly also impacted Johnny's lack of proper parenting towards Robby.
• There are two major karate dojos in the Valley. And they represent their team based on color, Cobra Kai being red and Miyagi-Do being blue. In many ways, the conflict between the dojos is almost like the Crips vs the Bloods.
  • Both have an initiation ritual. Miyagi-Do's is Wax On, Wax Off, Cobra Kai's is having the newcomer fight an existing student.
  • For the Bloods, sometimes members of the Bloods will go ahead and target their own members. Many members of Miyagi-Do and all of Eagle Fang's students were former members of Cobra Kai, even Daniel LaRusso. That means Cobra Kai members turning on other Cobra Kai members. Also what is Cobra Kai's abbreviation? CK, as in "Crip Killer."
• While the show makes very clear that a lot of the conflict wouldn't have happened if Daniel and Johnny were able to resolve a petty 34-year-old rivalry, it's also shown how important it is for kids to have role models in their lives. While older generations like to blame the "snowflake generation" for being assholes, they often don't want to admit that maybe that's because they had a part in that when it comes to raising them.
  • A lot of kids/teens today don't have many actual real role models, and a lot of parents have taken a hands-off "throw an iPad at them to get them to shut up" approach to parenting, which leads these kids to turn to Internet celebrities and other questionable people for guidance, which isn't good.
    • Notably, we see Daniel and Amanda forced to confront this issue in how they raised Anthony in season 4.
  • With most of the kids in the dojos here, their parents aren't around a lot of the time^note The only students whose parents are prominent characters in the show are Sam, Miguel, and Robby and the kids are left to their own devices while the parents selfishly deal with their own past issues, or take their insecurities out on their students. Except the students in question turned to karate because they wanted/needed someone to look up to for guidance. Sometimes, this works out great (Miguel's life largely improved once Johnny entered his life), but this desperation can also result in kids who get suckered into following bad role models like Kreese who are willing to take advantage of them.
  • This is also made very apparent in Daniel's and Johnny's failures in their relationships with Robby. It's clear by the end of season 3 that neither of them has more than a surface level understanding of the problem.
• It's very apparent that Daniel developed major trust issues after his time with Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III. Silver hired Mike Barnes to harass, intimidate, and eventually defeat Daniel, while psychologically manipulating Daniel to break off training with Miyagi and train with him, all under the guise that Kreese was dead. Daniel left Miyagi to train with Silver whose training methods were savage—they hurt Daniel and turned him against everyone he loved. Eventually, after a ton of physical and mental torment from Barnes and Silver, Daniel decided to leave Silver, and only then did Silver reveal the truth: that Kreese was alive and everything that’s happened had been a set-up to get Daniel to fight in the tournament (“Either you fight one fight on one day, or you fight every day for the rest of your life!"). We see examples of where the trauma and trust issues have affected Daniel all throughout the show:
  • Daniel has a very bad reaction when Johnny makes his speech to appeal Cobra Kai's ban from the All-Valley, in which Johnny claims Kreese is dead and his Cobra Kai is different. What Johnny doesn't realize is that his words are almost verbatim what Silver said to Daniel.
  • Any time someone calls Daniel "Danny Boy," whether that be Kreese or Tom Cole, he instantly gets very uncomfortable, because that's what Silver called him.
  • Daniel's fears of people lying to him or putting on an act only get worse here.
    • In season 1, Daniel's reaction to finding out Robby is Johnny's son is an angry, “You lied to me! Was this all just a con? Some kind of sick mind game you tried to pull off on me?!” Daniel's word choice is very telling, because what Silver did to Daniel was one big mind game. Daniel isn't thinking rationally because his trauma is talking. Add to that the fact that Daniel was pretty drunk, and Johnny had just attacked him in his own home, to which he had just invited Johnny in because he decided he could finally trust that Johnny is friendly/non-violent to him.
    • There's Daniel's handling of Kyler. Kyler presents himself to the LaRussos as a nice and respectful kid so he can get into Sam's pants. Look at how Daniel behaves after Johnny tells him that Kyler is not what he seems. Daniel has no reason to believe Johnny over Kyler (Amanda even tells him this), but it's actually very easy to make Daniel question the legitimacy of someone's good intentions, and especially when said "good intentions" are directed towards him or his family (and especially towards his daughter). Because Silver deceived him and acted like he had good intentions towards him and Mr. Miyagi. The morning after the confrontation with Johnny, Daniel is so distracted by his second thoughts about Kyler that Amanda finds herself having a one-sided conversation with him. When she finally gets him to snap out of his thoughts, she tells him that Sam's going to be fine because they've met Kyler and he seemed harmless. To which Daniel says, "Yeah, I've known plenty of guys who seemed harmless that were real pieces of crap behind the scenes." Terry Silver, for instance. So he insists on chaperoning at the Halloween dance, so he can keep an eye on Kyler to make sure he doesn't do any funny business with Sam. Sure enough, he sees Kyler taking Sam into an empty classroom and getting her to take off his belt, and Daniel intercedes at this point because he suspects Kyler was actually taking Sam aside so he could date rape her (with the next scene confirming that yes, Kyler was going to attempt date rape on Sam. Before they beat up Miguel, Brucks tells Kyler in the locker room, "You had [Sam] in the palm of your dick", and they talk about how the bracelet trick worked on some "slut" from another school).
    • In season 2, when Daniel goes to see Johnny about Robby's living situation, and finds Johnny with Kreese, he decides against letting Johnny know. It's because he doesn't want Robby anywhere near Kreese. He saw Kreese choke out 17 year old Johnny for coming in second place to Daniel in a tournament, and he attacked Johnny’s friends when they tried to help. He knows Kreese was Silver’s accomplice, and therefore was responsible for Daniel, as an 18 year old, being harassed and attacked, manipulated and coerced. Johnny sees a father figure in Kreese, but Daniel just sees a psychotic man, who is a danger to children, and who Johnny claimed had died, alive and kicking and hanging out with Johnny. Once again, he thinks Johnny lied to him, just like Silver.
    • Daniel subsequently warns Johnny that he is showing extremely bad judgment by associating himself with Kreese, and they are “both in for a rude awakening.” Daniel has every reason to think Kreese hasn't changed his ways and is manipulating Johnny the same way Silver manipulated Daniel in 1985. Something bad will come out of it, and Daniel is not going to let it go when it does. Johnny doesn't listen to his warning, and gets his rude awakening after the school brawl, when Kreese corrupts his students and steals Cobra Kai from right under his nose. In fact, when Johnny tells him that Kreese left the dojo, Daniel immediately assumes that Johny is pulling the same "Kreese is dead" trick.
    • In season 3, when Daniel catches Miguel and Sam making out at Miyagi-Do, Sam says to him, "I know it's been a lot. But can you please try to remember that I'm still your daughter, and that you can trust me?" and Daniel replies, "It's not you I don't trust, Sam." He's only had bad impressions of Miguel, since Miguel used the crane kick to mock Daniel at the tournament, and fought aggressively and dirty against Robby, coupled with whatever it is Sam told him about how her breakup with Miguel went down (which likely involved her describing him as acting like an asshole since Amanda says something along those lines). When Sam says, "Miguel's changed. He's a good person. He's not Cobra Kai's number one bully; he's not even in Cobra Kai anymore!" Daniel looks skeptical because of his personal interactions and observations of Miguel. Sam has had good interactions with Miguel, but Daniel hasn't, and anything he knows about Miguel has been filtered through whatever Sam told him.
• Think about Johnny's position and attitudes at the beginning of the series; he's a blonde haired, blue eyed straight man with a serious inferiority complex and nostalgia for the past who doesn't see much wrong with bullying or using violence to solve his problems, and is anti-intellectual, toxicly-masculine, shows signs of misogyny and queerphobia, and believes the first conspiracy theory he sees on the internet. If Cobra Kai hadn't given him a new purpose in life and kick-started his Character Development, he'd have remained prime Alt-right recruitment material, and could have easily fallen down a rabbit hole that lead to him blaming people like Miguel's family for all his problems and violently harassing them the same way he used to harass Daniel.

Season 1

• Sam has a bitter ex-boyfriend making up false rumors about her being promiscuous. The school never does anything about Kyler, which is especially bad considering she starts the show 2 years below the age of consent in California.
  • And it's actually brought up again in season 3, when the mother of one of her fellow students all but said she deserved being assaulted and grievously wounded by Tory because she had been "tramping around with the other girl's boyfriend". No wonder Amanda was livid about the school's decision to suspend Sam for defending herself: if she's aware of what Kyler did to Sam, she's probably mad that Kyler is still walking around the school free to bully Sam and other kids (and it seems to reason that Sam would've told her mother about this in the time since the cafeteria brawl).
• Near the end of season 1, when Hawk buys a veritable ocean of booze for the beach party. The Deadpan Snarker clerk clearly realizes that Hawk's "Walter Hawkman" ID is fake... but sells all that booze to him anyway! Could it be that with the convenience store's rent being doubled right alongside Cobra Kai's, the clerk simply can't afford to pass up a sale like that? Yet another terrible consequence that can be laid at Daniel's feet.
• At the All Valley Championships ("Mercy"), while Johnny is visibly stunned at the conduct of Hawk and Miguel after their victories, he can't quite figure out how and why it happened. Their respective answers fill in the blanks for him — in his teachings, he forgot a few significant steps!
• Daniel's handling of the matter of Johnny spraypainting a dick on his billboard. While the way he handled it was wrong, one imagines that, since he was bullied at school, he took it so personally because he feared that his kids would be bullied at school for it. We see this exact thing happen with Kyler, who uses Johnny's stunt to further slut-shame and bully Sam, but what about Anthony?

Season 2

• When John Kreese was inspiring cruelty at the seems, especially towards Daniel in The Karate Kid Part III, Miyagi was there to balance out the cruelty with serenity and lay him out. But now that Miyagi isn't alive anymore, and Kreese is gonna take over Cobra Kai presumably, imagine what kind of influence he will leave on this students, and how frightening it must be for Johnny to have to face the man who last choked him out when he lost the tournament.
  • Worse still, imagine Daniel's perspective on Kreese at the end of season 2. No one took Daniel seriously when he went on about how dangerous Kreese is, but now his worst fears have come true and Cobra Kai is 100% Kreese — the "bad teacher" who is far more to blame than Johnny for everything Cobra Kai ever did to Daniel. Worse yet, Miyagi is no longer around to counter him. Daniel is probably going to lose a lot of sleep from being torn between his promise to his wife to quit teaching karate and his painful awareness that the only way to stop Kreese will be to not only break that promise, but team up with Johnny!
  • The only way Amanda was ever going to understand what Daniel is getting at was if she herself is hit with a situation like this. In other words, it had to be learned the hard painful way: Demetri getting his arm broken by Hawk.
• So, that scene in season 2 where Shannon and "Rick" sneak into their apartment, only to accidentally wake Robby and upset him with the revelation that they're running off to "Cabo-adjacent" for a while. Think about it from Shannon's point of view. She was sneaking in — she wanted to get in, collect her things, and get out without Robby ever knowing. Which would have left Robby waking up the next morning without any clue at all where his mother went or if she was ever coming back. And Shannon was either totally okay with that, or completely failed to think things through.
  • Whereas Johnny had a rock solid relationship with his own mother Laura (a Gold Digger out of necessity), Shannon is only the present, involved parent to Robby in contrast to Johnny. She even told Robby that she's planning for her own future without him, as he grows up. And because, as she tells Johnny, she can't make Robby do anything anymore. Essentially, neither Shannon nor Johnny think they can be proper parents to Robby, when it comes down to it.
• What a kick in the head to Johnny to see the YouTube ad for Miyagi-Do. Considering that he has a few thriving dealerships in the Valley and Louie is no longer employed there, Daniel can run his side venture with total peace of mind — and no need to charge for any lessons. For the less well-off youth no less affected by the bullying epidemic Miguel has faced firsthand, and who might be apprehensive about fighting except as an absolute last resort, this is a huge benefit a small business owner isn't going to be able to take advantage of.
  • Though it actually turned out not to be a big deal in the grand scheme of things. While Johnny was initially worried, a lot of initial students were turned off by the "chores" approach. Then when he tries to show off with a demonstration, the Cobras intercepted with a flashier one (which they brought on themselves by throwing in a cheap shot at Cobra Kai in the YouTube ad). The only thing that caused Johnny to lose students and revenue was Daniel confronting him in the dojo mid-class.
• When the old Cobra Kai gang calls out Johnny on reopening Cobra Kai and bringing Kreese back into the fold, Bobby makes a mention about how they brought that "no mercy bullshit" out into the real world, implying that Bobby, Jimmy, Tommy, and Dutch also held onto the Cobra Kai philosophy for a time after high school and had just as much legal run-ins as Johnny before wising up and abandoning it altogether. In Dutch's case, it may have very well been the reason for his current incarceration.
• In "Glory of Love", when Johnny intimidates him into leaving Carmen alone, Graham says he'll ghost her, and Johnny almost lunges until Graham says he'll leave her alone. Johnny is Two Decades Behind, he likely thought Graham was threatening Carmen's life, so he was about to make sure he couldn't the only way he knew.
• Johnny rethinks his approach as a teacher after seeing his student's behavior at the tournament. He decides to teach them that they should fight fair and show mercy at times. However Johnny was operating based on what happened at the tournament, a competition with rules where people seldom get badly injured, but he imprints his new way onto Miguel so successfully that Miguel decides to show mercy... during what amounts to a street fight. Dislocating or even breaking Robby's arm would be justified considering Robby would not stop. Instead, Miguel lets him go, and the result is that Miguel is now fighting for his life. Johnny forgot that while martial artists must show restraint at the dojo and competition, in real life, there truly are no rules. This does not mean you must be merciless or evil, just that you're justified in always protecting yourself. Kreese is a psycho, but he's not wrong about mercy being dangerous in such situations. And how did the show foreshadow this? Right at the beginning. Johnny had Kreese at his mercy, but chose to let him go. Kreese showed him just what a big mistake that had been. Now both of Johnny's mistakes (fighting dirty at the tournament against Daniel and showing mercy to Kreese) have been repeated by Miguel, the mistakes of the (surrogate) father, repeated by the (surrogate) son.
• In the climax of these first two seasons, Robby and Miguel are the last remaining combatants. Their brawl on campus (season 2) represents an inversion of the championship match at the tournament (season 1). Robby's attempt at Honor Before Reason turned into a Farmer and the Viper moment, as Miguel showed no qualms about exploiting his injury once he overcame the Revenge Before Reason that led to the match point round. On the flip side, Miguel's attempt at Honor Before Reason would become an even more devastating Farmer and the Viper moment, as Revenge Before Reason clouded Robby's judgement on the top floor. Clearly furious at having been outfought throughout, and possibly recalling how his own attempts to be gracious were reciprocated, Robby judged it to be outright mockery. Had the gesture come from anyone else, it's highly likely the brawl would have ended right there with no further incident. Instead, his actions are likely to be the catalyst for forcing West Valley High to finally face up to the bullying epidemic that inspired Cobra Kai's resurrection.
  • Even worse? The school didn't really do much to stop bullying.
• Most Real Life Eastern martial arts schools would expel any student who acted as Tory (or perhaps Hawk) did during the school brawl. But neither were shown suffering any repercussions. Why? Because they embraced Kreese's creed to the letter — which he sees as grounds for promotion or advancement. Never mind that they both lost their respective fights against their Miyagi-do counterpart (Sam and Demetri).
  • That last bit — how Kreese is keeping Hawk and Tory despite their loss to their Miyagi-Do rivals — is further Fridge Horror. Just as Johnny has learned from the mistakes of his past, so has Kreese. Even when his best "soldiers" are defeated, the old bastard is no longer so quick to enter You Have Failed Me mode and cast them aside!
  • If his handling of Mitch, Hawk, and Bert in the third season is any indication, the jury is out on whether Kreese actually has learned anything. (Even though he now has Robby with Cobra Kai, Robby likely is going to get hit with this revelation in the fourth season; Tory might, and even Kyler of all people might.) To retain control of Cobra Kai in its current form (not Johnny's) and keep what became Eagle Fang in check, having more people follow in Hawk's footsteps (meaning another Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal) is the last thing he needs.
• Tory decides to orchestrate a very public attack on Sam at school so that others can witness her giving Sam a thrashing. Why not just attack Sam in private, where there's less chance of others (teachers, Miguel, Robby) stopping her? Or more likely, Tory planned this elaborate attack at school so that Miguel could see what she does to Sam. She could physically attack Miguel for cheating on her with Sam, but if she had succeeded in seriously injuring Sam, she kills two birds with one stone: putting down her rival and inflicting pain on her cheating boyfriend. The best way to attack someone is to go after someone that they care about. And Tory knows Miguel has been pining for Sam this whole time she's been together with him, so she knows that if Sam got hurt, Miguel would be crushed. And doesn't that sound suspiciously like Miguel's "watch what I do to Robby" during the tournament when he thought Robby was moving in on Sam?
• It's revealed this season that Miguel's mom is an x-ray tech. Imagine if she ended up being the one to image her own son following the school fight and being the first to see the extent of the trauma done to his spine.

Season 3

• In season 3, we see how much that Tory and Kreese have in common. Both were originally much-abused menial laborers who had to kick asses just to survive, both had sick mothers, both had the first real love of their lives end because of brutal accidents, and both fell under the guidance of sociopathic mentors (Captain Turner for Kreese, Kreese for Tory) who lured them into the path of ruthlessness. It's all too easy to imagine that when Kreese finally dies, Tory will be more than ready to inherit his mantel as a psychopathic corruptor. Furthermore the fact that Kreese was once a sweat hearted young man who defended the innocent despite being bullied and initial adversity from his mother’s suicide and menial labor. That man was turned into the sociopathic manipulative social Darwinist man we know today by his experiences at war. The lesson being that this could happen to any of these kids, whether they’re in Cobra Kai, Miyagi Do, or Eagle Fang.
• Johnny mistook, or was intentionally misled by, Kreese at the bar in "The Right Path" in Season 3. Kreese is trying to get Johnny to come back to Cobra Kai, saying: "And when our boy comes back, well, we'll help him get on his feet." In response, Johnny darkly threatens to kill Kreese if he comes anywhere near then-recovering Miguel or his family. But Kreese was, almost certainly, referring to Robby and not Miguel.
  • During the encounter at the bar, Kreese likely wrote Miguel off in the future of Cobra Kai due to his injury. Even before that, Kreese likely knew that he had no chance to get Miguel on his side (given Miguel could see how full of shit he was), and any chance that he did have went through Johnny, as Johnny had been training Miguel for the entire school year before Kreese came back. Kreese ultimately burns that bridge anyway, at the park in "Obstáculos," saying his students were true fighters, unlike Miguel who made the "mistake" of showing mercy.
    • It's safe to say that if Miguel had wanted to join Kreese's Cobra Kai after season 2, he would've been rejected. Kreese allows potential students to fight for their place in the dojo, but for this one case, Kreese probably considered the school fight to be Miguel's "audition" for his Cobra Kai, and him showing mercy to Robby meant he failed to make the cut. Kreese also saw Miguel's loyalty to Johnny (whose allegiance was not a guarantee) as a liability. This puts Kreese's line to Hawk in the second episode of season 3 about how "with Diaz out, we're gonna need a new champion. Someone with no fear and no mercy" in a different light. He doesn't mean "with Diaz out due to injury," but "with Diaz out for not adhering to my Cobra Kai's principles." Because that episode saw Kreese manipulate Tory into coming back to the dojo, Hawk was led to think she was who Kreese was talking about as his "new champion", which was only partially the truth because he never knew Kreese was making plans to recruit Robby.
  • Martin Kove has said that Kreese views Johnny like a son, and so those feelings extend to Robby. And Kreese has repeatedly expressed interest in Robby (while having no such interest in Miguel). He wants to help him to get back "on his feet" after he is released from juvie. Referring to him as "our boy" is more chilling referring to Robby rather than Miguel: a possessive view of his student's son, which he all but confirms in the season finale when he proposes "three generations" of Cobra Kai, including Robby.
  • Not to say Kreese is the sort to be shocked by a credible death threat, but he is entirely unfazed by Johnny's here. That's because he has no intention of interfering with Miguel or his family.
  • The groundwork for this line of Fridge Horror was laid all the way back in season 2. Remember how Kreese (when he first reappeared) repeatedly chastised Johnny because Robby was being trained by Daniel? The old bastard had been planning to snare Robby all along! Not just for the "three generations of Cobra Kai" thing, but also as a way of getting back at Daniel for ruining Kreese and Terry Silver's plans in The Karate Kid Part III to use Mike Barnes's championship to turn Cobra Kai into a franchise of karate dojos in the San Fernando Valley.
  • Despite the apparent misconception, Johnny likely would have made the same threat to Kreese if he knew it was Robby he was referring to. Their final bout in Season 3 very much cements this — when Johnny confronts Kreese at the dojo and find him training Robby, Johnny's seizing the sai from the dojo's Wall of Weapons showed that (had Robby not been present) he was ready to make good on that promise.
  • A lot of the Fridge Horror surrounding this makes one realize that Kreese was in attendance at the All-Valley:
    • 1. He showed up at the dojo that night knowing that Cobra Kai had won. He likely saw the fliers that Johnny had been distributing, and attended the All-Valley to see how they did.
    • 2. In season 2 episode 2, when Kreese meets Miguel and all of Johnny's students, he's pretty dismissive of all of them because he didn't see them as natural born fighters.
    • 3. In the episode after this, he overhears Miguel and Hawk confront Johnny about Robby Keene being his son and him being mad at what they did to him at the tournament. Afterwards, Kreese tells Johnny how it's not right that Daniel is training Johnny's son, meaning Kreese already knew that Robby was in Miyagi-Do, something he couldn't have known unless he was there for the final round when Robby was introduced by the announcer as being from Miyagi-Do rather than as unaffiliated (like he had for the entirety of the tournament up to that point). Which means he also already knew that Robby barely lost to Miguel even with an injured arm that Miguel kept exploiting to win. So, not only is Robby Johnny's son, Robby is the natural born fighter that Kreese wants.^note Which has a bit of irony considering that in another world, this would've made Daniel 'Cobra Kai material' by virtue of winning the tournament despite Kreese's attempts to put him at a disadvantage
    • 4. Kreese realized right away that Johnny would pick Miguel over Robby when push came to shove, and also seemed amused by Miguel's Undying Loyalty to Johnny. So Kreese tries to use Miguel to convince Johnny to go back to the no mercy teachings, but Johnny has more of an influence on Miguel than Miguel has on Johnny. And regardless of how broken their relationship is, Robby is Johnny's son and a child is always a weakness for a parent, more so than a student is. So Kreese knew that using Robby against Johnny would have more of an impact.
  • The ultimate Fridge Horror to this point: for all the talk of him refusing to learn from his mistakes, Kreese has clearly learned and accepted one thing. He was able to build Johnny's gang from the ground up but felt (with his new crop of students) it was something he couldn't do anymore. He steadfastly refuses to be done in by that limitation! The old bastard knows he's on borrowed time and is making damn sure to get as much mileage out of his remaining years as he can!
• Martin Kove has said in interviews that Kreese views Johnny as if he were a son to him, so he's also applying those feelings to Robby by extension. This not only explains Kreese's constant efforts to snare Robby when it's clear Johnny won't play ball, but it creates a very dark contrast to the way Mr. Miyagi viewed Sam as if she were his own granddaughter.
  • That Mr. Miyagi viewed Sam like a granddaughter may very well be part of the reason Kreese went the extra mile to secure Tory's loyalty: because she's someone he can use to target Sam. Kreese wants to weaken and destroy the Miyagi-Do legacy, while building up his own Cobra Kai legacy using Robby (and Johnny before he refused).
• One of the themes of season 3 is that different people have different responses to traumatic experiences. Nowhere is this better seen than in showing the differences between Miguel's, Sam's, Hawk's, and Tory's responses to the school brawl.
  • Miguel’s upset, and angry at Johnny because he chose to show mercy and got paralyzed for it, because for the first time he’s being confronted with the reality that sometimes you do the right thing and life doesn’t reward you for it. Largely removed from everyone else, he’s so understandably caught up in his own rough experiences during his recovery period. And since he was the only Cobra Kai who got hospitalized, it makes it difficult for him to sympathize with Tory when she repeats Kreese's mantra, “when one of us gets hurt, we all get hurt.”
  • Sam has the most easily recognizable symptoms of PTSD, and as such the easiest ones to swallow. She has the flashbacks, she has the panic attacks, she freezes up during fights which keeps her from being able to help her friends. She's allowed to admit how scared and alone she felt as a result of her fight with Tory, and by opening up to her dad, Daniel is able to provide her the emotional support she desperately needs.
  • Hawk reacts by becoming hyper-vigilant. He wants revenge against all of Miyagi-Do because he thinks if he can take control of the situation, it’ll somehow make everything right again. And Kreese fosters this desire in him whole-heartedly. Hawk wraps himself in his own anger as a shield, keeps beating down his instincts that tell him his actions are wrong, and makes wrong decision after wrong decision, up to and including breaking his friend’s arm because he has seen himself what the consequences of showing mercy could be.
  • Tory is isolated both by outside forces (being expelled from school) and due to her own feelings. She practices avoidance. She stays away from Miguel because she’s completely consumed by guilt, and since she doesn’t know how to actively fix it, she prefers to not confront those feelings at all. Kreese actively manipulates her into fixating on Sam as the source of everything that ruined her life (even though in reality Miguel is just as much to blame), tells her that the only thing that matters is winning at all costs, keeping her from confronting her own sense of guilt.
  • And it really makes the biggest difference that Miguel and Sam are able to recover as much as they did because they both have the unconditional support of people who love them and look out for their wellbeing, whereas Hawk and Tory were stuck in the hands of an opportunistic extremist.
  • Sam's PTSD can also be easily contrasted against Kreese's, as Kreese shows what can happen when PTSD goes untreated.
• Robby running into Tory at the probation office seems like a coincidence, right? Maybe not. What are the chances that Robby and Tory, who both were implicated in the same matter, would be in the same place at the same time without that being arranged? Since Robby has already been approached by Kreese, it stands to reason that Kreese, just like Daniel, found out when Robby was going to be released from lockup. Upon finding out the day of Robby's release, he likely advised Tory to reschedule her appointment with the probation officer for that day itself. And after Kreese found out Tory's sentiments about Robby and Miguel, Tory mentioned to Kreese that she would like to express certain viewpoints to Robby, so he then advised Tory to reschedule for that specific afternoon of that day so that she would have that chance. Notice that Tory did not seem at all startled or surprised to see Robby, unlike when she ran into Miguel at her day job. Of course Robby was not expecting to see Tory at that time.
  Kreese did not even ask Tory about whether or not she met Robby. The following morning, he sees that Tory approves of Robby's possible joining of Cobra Kai when she nods her head for his presence at the dojo.
• Robby's reaction to seeing Sam with Miguel makes sense when you realize he likely had suspected for a while that Sam didn't have strong feelings for him. The fact that he's hinted to have low self-esteem probably started it, but...
  • Miguel's "She doesn't love you, she loves me," taunt is what really tipped Robby over the edge during the school fight. Miguel says this in response to Robby's accusation that the kiss happened as a result of Miguel taking advantage of Sam (which is understandable when one considers Robby's seen his mother regularly come home drunk with one night stands, some of whom have probably taken advantage of her). If Robby didn't deep down truly believe that what Miguel said was true, he wouldn't have gotten so upset to the point of kicking Miguel over the railing.
  • Despite that, Robby tries to deny the truth, both by shutting down Shawn's taunts about it and by insisting to Tory that Sam is a good person who just made a mistake (which Tory immediately shuts down since she saw Sam kiss Miguel).
  • While in juvie, Robby sees Sam on TV giving an interview at the car wash fundraiser. Since Sam is Miyagi-Do's star pupil (both by virtue of being Daniel's daughter and having the most karate training of them all) and likeliest to have come up with the idea, he probably feels like there were romantic undertones to Sam's action (which is probably a fact, considering the mixed signals Sam was giving when she visited Miguel in the hospital earlier in the episode), especially since this is around the same time Sam gives up trying to reach out to him.
  • Then in 3x08, Robby catches Sam with Miguel at Miyagi-Do, and they're flirting, play-fighting, and about to kiss, and because he's now seen it with his own eyes he can't really deny it anymore. He's forced to confront the fact that Sam doesn't mind and doesn't regret what happened at Moon's party. It would be one thing if it truly was a drunken kiss that Sam regretted but it's not. Sam was okay with what happened when she was impaired. She might have regretted the circumstances surrounding the kiss...but she doesn't regret kissing Miguel. And because Robby is in love with Sam, that hurts him. Like his dad, Robby's pain tends to manifest as anger, and when Miguel physically gets in between Robby and Sam, Miguel is, in a way, forcing him to see the painful truth again, just like he did during the school fight. And since Robby lashes out when he's hurt, he gets angry and tries to take a swing at Miguel.
• At the end of season 3, it was beautiful seeing Demetri and Hawk together again, despite everything Hawk had done to Demetri. With Johnny present, it is also implied that Johnny has forgiven him despite Hawk continually forsaking him from the season 2 finale onward. Yet the Easily Forgiven trope has already stretched pretty far... and Hawk has still more of his history to answer for. Forget how Nathaniel (who Hawk beat up and robbed) might feel about sharing a class with Hawk - how will Daniel feel if and when he learns that Hawk was the one who trashed Miyagi-Do and stole the Medal of Honor? Remember that Daniel turned his back on Robby more than once, and for less grave offenses. In season 4, will Hawk be able to escape a Heel–Face Door-Slam?
  • Season 4 thankfully reveals that while Hawk is NOT Easily Forgiven by Johnny, Daniel, or the other Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang students outside of Miguel and Demitri, they're willing to give him a chance to earn back their trust and forgiveness upon seeing his dedication to atoning for his past actions.
• When Tory sees that Hawk has defected midway through the house fight, she warns him to watch his back. Throughout the season, Kreese has seen that Hawk's allegiance was weakening. Kreese watched Hawk's reactions to him kicking out Bert (he immediately asked Kreese whether it was a good idea to be cutting members after the school fight) and Mitch (because Mitch got replaced with Kyler), and later bringing in Robby (because he injured Miguel). Kreese won't be surprised that Hawk left Cobra Kai. But Hawk didn't just leave Cobra Kai, he defected midway through a battle that Cobra Kai was winning, and Cobra Kai lost because of it (the moment he changed sides, the fight was effectively over and in Miyagi-Do / Eagle Fang's favor). Kreese will not take this betrayal lightly.
  • In season 4, the worst Hawk gets is having his mohawk forcibly shaved due to his antagonism of Cobra Kai, which ends up furthering his Character Development.
• Believe it or not, the home invasion was an eight versus eight fight. But unless Cobra Kai has a spy in Miyagi-Do or Eagle Fang, they had no way of knowing who would be there. Their apparent intent was to attack the family, and if Tory was the instigator, Miguel and Sam on the assumption they would be together, there. Eight versus two. Or eight versus Daniel, Sam, and the members of the LaRusso family with no fighting experience. Of course, Papa Wolf Daniel on his home turf might actually be a match for half a dozen kids with a year or less of training.
• Season 3's revelations about the secrets of Miyagi-Do make the scene where Daniel confronts Johnny in Cobra Kai about Cobra Kai students trashing the Miyagi dojo come off in a different light. Because it's an example of Daniel (intentionally or not) twisting the rules of Miyagi-Do Karate in order to justify its use in a situation where really, according to the actual rules of Miyagi-Do, Daniel would have been wrong to fight Johnny here, even though he didn't technically strike first. The fact that what Daniel learns about Miyagi-Do from Chozen changes the entire meaning behind the style could be why Mr. Miyagi didn't teach it or use it himself (as in, maybe he didn't agree with that part of the teachings and so he omitted it from Daniel's lessons). But, this scene with Daniel and Johnny makes one wonder if Miyagi was afraid that the true meaning of Miyagi-Do could be even more easily misconstrued or misused than rule number one. It's shown to be possible in the "Miyagi-Do" episode, as while Sam and the Miyagi-Dos standing up for themselves isn't necessarily wrong, it does end poorly for them (with Sam having a panic attack and Demetri's arm getting broken). And with Daniel's history of twisting the rules of Miyagi-Do in order to fit his needs, was Miyagi perhaps concerned about what Daniel would do with this section of Miyagi-Do?
• Season 3 episode 2 and the way Kreese handles the matter of Tory and her dirtbag landlord is so messed up for so many reasons.
  • For starters, impulse control issues like Tory's are not uncommon amongst teenagers. People tell themselves that they have to keep out of trouble and try to remind themselves of the consequences, and sometimes they are able to do so effectively. However, other times, they become so emotionally dysregulated that impulse control goes out the window and in that moment, they either forget about the consequences or figure that the action is worth it. Kreese treats self-control as a weakness (whereas most karate dojos put tremendous emphasis on the importance of self-discipline and self-control). He encourages this side of Tory, and Tory idolizes him (it also shows in his treatment of Hawk).
  • Besides the obvious matter of Tory's landlord extorting sex from a teenager, it’s also disturbing because we get a glimpse of what might have have happened to Tory had she not gone back to Cobra Kai. We get a glimpse of Tory trying to overcome her demons. We see her express regret, blaming herself for instigating the fight that led to Miguel’s injury, and stopping herself from fighting her creep of a landlord. When Kreese visits her to try and get her to return to the dojo, she tells him that she can't. Not only does she have no money for karate lessons, she has no time, as she's working two jobs and studying for her GED. In other words, Tory is trying to get back on track.
  • If Kreese truly cared about Tory, he would have reported that creep landlord — either to the police, to child protective services, or at the bare minimum, to Tory’s case manager. He also wouldn’t accept Tory back to the dojo until her probation was over. He would've told her that she’s a great fighter, but that he didn’t want to be the reason she got involved in any fights that ended with her in handcuffs. He would've told her that if she has any other problems with creeps or anyone else, she should come to him.
  • While Kreese was legitimately disgusted by the landlord (for all Kreese's faults, ignoring or condoning molestation isn't one of them), he also wasn’t completely altruistic when he fought and threatened the dirtbag. He knew that Tory could kick the landlord’s ass, and that the only reason she wasn’t doing so was because she was trying to stay out of trouble. He didn’t see her burgeoning self-control as a strength, but as a weakness. He didn’t see that the weakness was in the juvie system (e.g., Tory knowing that her probation officer would probably not believe her about the landlord), he saw the weakness as Tory’s. He knew that by saving Tory, he could not only buy her loyalty, but ensure that she remain a ruthless soldier for his own means.
  • And it shows. Notice how from this point onwards, we barely see a glimpse of remorse or humanity from Tory again. She goes back to starting fights and loses all of the impulse-control that she had started to develop. We never hear any mention of her GED. She no longer seems to feel bad about the fact that she started the fight that hurt Miguel, but instead blames Sam for Miguel’s injury. Eventually she even comes to blame Miguel for his own injury. While it would make perfect sense for her to be blaming him for kissing Sam,^note After all, Miguel is just as guilty as Sam is because he sought her out, and Sam doesn't kiss him right away; she waits for his consent before they lock lips her conversation with him at the sushi restaurant (and their interactions after) suggest that she has come to believe he would never have gotten hurt had he not “pushed” her to start the fight. She goes from “Miguel got hurt; it’s all my fault,” to “I’m joining Cobra Kai and risking returning to juvie, but it’s to avenge Miguel after what Miyagi-Do did,” to "calling Miguel a traitor for siding with Sam and the rest of Miyagi-Do, all while Tory herself gladly welcomes Robby into Cobra Kai, the guy responsible for injuring Miguel". Kreese is one hell of a drug.
    • Fortunately, however, Amanda and Robby's lessons about balance help her to start to find her way away from him.
• For all of Kreese's talk about needing students to be tough and ready for the real world, he really perpetuates a victim mentality that is only setting these students up for failure. He’s only tough when it’s convenient. We see him sucking up to the city councilpeople and filing a restraining order against Amanda because she slapped him over an inappropriate comment. He manipulates his students into thinking they’re the victims. He inspires Hawk to vandalize Miyagi-Do because he lost a fight he started over a Yelp review. And it very much reflects in how Johnny's life fell apart after Kreese turned on him, in Tory not taking responsibility for her actions and making excuses, and the same for Robby after he joins Cobra Kai.
• Given how Robby's abandonment issues have played out, it's safe to say those were what made Robby more susceptible to Kreese’s influence. In season 1, his mother was always making time for a revolving door of men over him. Robby feels his own dad abandoned him and picked another surrogate son in Miguel. Sam cheating on him with Miguel at Moon's party, and Daniel calling in the police (and also kicking him out of his house earlier, yelling at him) must have broken Robby's heart, given how used he is to being let down, and this after hoping he finally found a family in the LaRussos. Kreese and Cobra Kai give him the social validation and father figure he desires, while allowing him to channel his hurt into an aggressive form of karate. Because of this abandonment history, it’s hard for Robby to believe that Johnny and Daniel could love him after what he did, and that makes him susceptible to Kreese.
  • Daniel blames himself about what happened and he tries to help Robby. The problem is that as far as Robby believes, based on the prior times Daniel kicked him out, Daniel assumed that he intentionally kicked Miguel off the balcony, and never asked him what happened or why he did it. And after calling the cops before telling him, he lost his chance. To Robby, this says to him that Daniel doesn't trust him to choose the right thing.
  • Johnny messed up really bad here. He directly blames Robby for putting Miguel in the hospital without trying to find out that he really tried to stop the fight on the first place and Miguel attacked him.
  • Kreese tells him exactly what he needed to hear. Even if he was playing with him, Robby was at his lowest point, and Kreese was the only one to understand that he was just trying to end the brawl, so this is why he gets into Robby's head. He makes Robby feel like he is misunderstood and the school fight was not his fault, and also gets him to adapt the Cobra Kai ethos.
• At the end of the season, Robby joins Cobra Kai and seeks out Kreese as a father figure due to Johnny not being a supportive dad to him. It's not really surprising when one realizes that the whole time, Robby has never been more than an afterthought to Johnny. While it was touched upon in previous seasons, it really shows in Season 3, and the effect it has on the story. Actions do speak louder than words, and while Johnny says Robby is a priority, he never makes an effort to show it. For instance:
  • After Robby goes on the run after the school brawl, Johnny does not look for his missing son, who is on the streets, and wanted by the cops. He instead hits the bottle and goes on a drinking binge, and it's Daniel who files the missing persons report, calling hospitals looking for Robby, and consults a lawyer to help Robby plead out.
  • Johnny does not even consider looking for Robby until Daniel approaches him and brings it up that Robby is alone out there. While they work together, Johnny is also quick to abandon the mission as soon as the trail hits a dead end, and he and Daniel get into an argument.
  • Johnny does not visit Robby in juvie, blowing off his promised visit when Miguel's grandma talks him into staying with her and Carmen while Miguel is under the knife. He then expects Robby to make another appointment again, and gets angry when Robby refuses.
  • The rest of Robby's time in juvie, while it's implied that Johnny did try to call him (and got rebuffed), he could have sent him a letter or small care package, something tangible to show that he cares and couldn't be rebuffed as easily.
  • When Robby gets out, he tells Johnny to stay out of his life and wanders off. While Robby is understandably angry, he also has no place to go...yet there's not even a hint of concern for his well-being from Johnny. Once again, Daniel shows more concern for Robby's wellbeing, even if he doesn't understand why Robby doesn't want his help either.
  • In the season finale, when Johnny storms into Cobra Kai and finds Robby being trained by Kreese, he looks surprised to see him there. From the previous episode, we know that Robby went there with the intention to stay the night, then Kreese and Tory talked him into staying. Meanwhile, Johnny hooked up with Carmen, then had a lovely day and evening with Ali, and was not going to look for his son.
• After the brawl, the school's added security measures are shown to be bag checks, metal detectors, and their "Hugs Not Hits" conflict resolution program. Except for the very dubious effectiveness of the last one, none of these would actually improve security against a repeat of the karate brawl. The only thing it might've prevented was Tory bringing her spiked bracelet (which she shouldn't have been allowed to have on school grounds anyway). None of the combatants were armed, no weapons (with the exception of Chris's textbook and the aforementioned bracelet) were involved, and a sufficiently skilled martial artist could use just about anything from pens to books to backpacks in a fight anyway. These security measures are plainly less about actually making the students safer and more about being perceived to be doing something. Even the school's "zero-tolerance karate" policy only encourages the students to take their fights off school grounds, which is exactly what happens throughout Season 3. And that is probably just fine with the school board, since if the kids are beating each other senseless off school property, the school doesn't have to worry about getting sued by angry parents.
• Robby fully aligning with Kreese and attacking Johnny at the end of Season 3 is far scarier if you think about the fact that Johnny probably neglected him so much and for so long in the first place because he didn't think he could be a good father figure to Robby because of Kreese being his (very twisted) model of what a father figure looked like. Johnny probably stayed away from Robby at least in part because he feared that he would be a Kreese-like father figure to Robby and be abusive toward him in the same way Kreese was, as he literally did not know how to properly guide him without being like Kreese. He probably thought of all the horrific outcomes that would take place for Robby's life if he mentored him in the same way he was mentored by Kreese. It's not unreasonable to think in light of this that Johnny probably had nightmares before of Kreese himself becoming a father figure to Robby and all the inevitably disastrous and horrific results that came from it. Now, come the end of Season 3, he's seeing this exact thing happen in real life, with Robby falling under Kreese's influence and being taught by him — Robby has literally put on a Cobra Kai gi and attacked his father physically on behalf of Kreese. To sum it up, Johnny was reluctant to mentor Robby for fear of being too much like Kreese towards him, only for Kreese HIMSELF to be mentoring Robby by the end of Season 3. With Robby's attack on him, Johnny is essentially watching his worst nightmare unfold right in front of him.
• It's a very good thing Sam showed up when she did at the end of the season. If Johnny or Daniel had actually killed Kreese, it's entirely possible they'd be in jail for the next couple of decades, at least.

Season 4

• Shawn’s whole reason for being in prison reads like so many real life situations for black youth. A “friend” tries to steal from his home and attacks his brother when he’s caught. Shawn in turn defends his brother and gets arrested. Was this an example of disproportionate persecution that the system practices against young black males?
  • I was thinking the same thing. From what it sounds like, what Shawn did to get in juvie was a lot less egregious than what Robby did (as Shawn did at least start off justifiably defending his brother while Robby attacked Miguel decisively after Miguel showed mercy), yet Shawn got a longer sentence. There's only one possible explanation for that (even taking into account that Robby turned himself in like Daniel thought would help), and it's the one you just gave OP.
    • Shawn has shown himself to be far from a model inmate unlike Robby, who tried to quietly serve out his time (barring his one brawl with Shawn in which neither of them snitched). His bullying of other inmates and cheeking the guards (Kenny mentioning him spitting at one which only lengthened his sentence) may be Shawn taking out his frustration of being unfairly profiled.
• Kreese is a violent, impulsive, narcissistic liar. When Johnny lost the All-Valley in the 80s and told him off, Kreese nearly killed him, and he actually liked Johnny. If Kreese hadn't gone to jail, he'd probably have retaliated by having the entirety of Cobra Kai jump whomever scored the winning points; most likely Hawk, Miguel or Sam (or maybe the latter two when they're together), and given them a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that could easily have permanently paralyzed Miguel or killed any of them, even if that wasn't their explicit intention. After that, best-case scenario is Kreese goes to prison the rest of his life, Daniel and Johnny never recover mentally and the valley bans Karate forever. Worst case? Johnny and Daniel try to kill Kreese and Silver, they're both killed or sent to prison, and Kreese and Silver now know they can get away with murder.

Season 5

• As if the scene itself wasn't bad enough, when Kim and Silver torture Tory for ditching the fixed Sekai Taikai qualifier, Tory initially tries to leave, only for three of the senseis, full-grown adult men with decades of training under their belts, to block her way. What the hell would Terry, Kim, and those brutes have done to Tory if she persisted in her attempt to leave?
  • And related to the above, even Silver thinks that Sensei Kim's punishment for Tory is too much, despite that he granted approval of the stone dummy exercise. Considering that he did the same thing to Daniel in the '80s, he did not indulge in that sadistic glee, but he felt that stone dummy exercise was for Tory's own good.
• When confronting Daniel about how he lost everything after his furniture store burned down, Mike Barnes is about to talk about what happened to his wife but at the last second he reneged. Given his devastated expression, there are a few conclusions that can be drawn from this: his wife left him, she's similarly in a state of devastation and depression like her husband is (and possibly started abusing alcohol and/or drugs), or she was in the store at the time of the fire.
• Given how Mike says he left karate (not just competing) after 1985, that means he's probably thirty years out of practice. Notably, he mostly just charges and tackles most of his opponents in the house fight, since his muscle memory's degraded. He's lucky he got knocked out during the first few minutes; otherwise, if he'd tried to really go toe-to-toe with an experienced and ruthless martial arts teacher, he could've easily been killed.
• Before running into Johnny in the hospital elevator, one can suggest that Silver is on a routine check-up on his health, considering that he is now at an old age. Whatever illness he could be diagnosed with might be up to the viewer's interpretation, considering that his addiction to cocaine in the 80's, coupled with occasional smoking may have an impact on his health. Many have also interpreted his concern with his legacy to be a hint that he knows he's dying.
• Jessica giving Amanda a heads-up about Terry Silver shows that Amanda should've listened to Daniel in the first place because the former is still haunted with nightmares of the events of Part III as a result of getting attacked by Barnes and his henchmen under Silver's orders. Silver is very good at hiding his sinister nature by presenting himself as a a philanthropist of goodwill when behind closed doors; he is a conniving sociopath capable of sabotaging the relationships of people (like Daniel) so he can exploit them when they are at their most vulnerable, then turn them into the worst versions of themselves. Imagine Sam and/or even Anthony ending up like Daniel back in the '80s when he was indoctrinated by Silver's teachings of "no mercy" had Amanda never returned to her husband's side. More than what Daniel would be like if Mr. Miyagi, or even Jessica herself, didn't intervene...
• The bullying Anthony goes through courtesy of Kenny and his fellow Cobra Kai students is nothing compared to the likes of what Miguel, Hawk, and even Kenny himself have mostly been through. Only that Anthony finds himself in life-threatening situations caused by his bullies. Kyler and the others wrapping him with inner tubes and Kenny kicking him into the lazy river at the waterpark could have drowned Anthony. And, when he runs into them again at a mall where Cobra Kai is promoting their dojo expansion, they give him a swirly in an unsanitized toilet. Anthony could have gotten sick from that.
• Sensei Kim Da-Eun's abusive methods of mentorship towards Tory could be seen as a metaphor for tiger parenting, a strict and authoritative form of parenting to ensure their children's success, which is a commonplace in some East Asian countries. Da-Eun will go to great lengths to make sure Cobra Kai's students attain success and punishes (physically and emotionally) those who do not meet her expectations (best shown when she hits Tory with a bamboo stick when she fails to hit Devon hard enough and the stone dummy exercise, as punishment for Tory going AWOL during the Sekai Taikai tryouts), and sees Devon as a potential replacement for Tory once she deems the latter outlived of her usefulness. And given Da-Eun's heritage of being the granddaughter of a ruthless Tang Soo Do master, meaning she was raised and taught by him at the same time, it makes you wonder if Da-Eun had been pushed too hard in her youth by her grandfather's indoctrination which made her into what she is today.
• We see Silver buying out Topanga Karate and turning it into yet another branch of Cobra Kai, with it being stated that he's doing this across the Valley. All of those students, if they're smart enough not to join Cobra Kai, now no longer have anywhere to go. How many kids and teenagers miss out on learning self-defense, having a healthy way to exercise and deal with stress and aggression, and building self-confidence and self-discipline thanks to Silver buying out their dojos?
  • Especially since, now that Silver's in jail, it's probably still going to be difficult for the senseis to buy back their dojos.
• Silver and Kreese's sensei was Master Kim Sun-Yung. Sun-Yung's granddaughter is named Kim Da-Eun. Gee, who do those names remind you of?
• Stingray's unwillingness to help the Miyagi-Fang alliance makes a lot of sense, given that the encounter by the students and senseis both took place at his apartment. Silver waiting for Daniel at Stingray's apartment alone is a sure sign that Silver has access to Stingray's new home at any hour of the day. Who knows what kind of surveillance or attack Silver could easily inflict onto Stingray with 24/7 access to the apartment?