In a sea of ’80s and ’90s reboots, reimaginings, and continuations, there is typically a lot more failure than success. However, Netflix’s Cobra Kai is the shining example of how to bring a classic IP to a new generation. Its first two seasons as a YouTube Original were a massive success, and after Netflix grabbed it for Season 3, the world knew about the greatness of the series.
Now, coming into Season 4, Cobra Kai has finally hit its “sophomore slump,” just two years later than expected. Seasons 1-3 were incredibly fun and built on ideas from the original movies, while Season 4 pulls a bit from Karate Kid III for its main story–the weakest in the original trilogy.
Digging into Daniel LaRusso’s (Ralph Macchio) past, this season heavily deals with the return of Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith)–the bad guy from the third film. He teams back up with Kreese (Martin Kove) in order to take down the team of LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), building towards the second All-Valley Karate Tournament on Cobra Kai. However, the reasoning for his return is forced and doesn’t make sense. Silver has his own life–outside of the world of karate–where he’s fancy and still has a lot of money. But the appearance of Kreese has Silver running down memory lane, which for some reason leads him think he still owes Kreese a life debt for saving him during the Vietnam war, and Silver decides to join back up with Kreese to ruin the lives of teenagers he doesn’t know–something Silver says he wants no part of moments earlier. Considering where Silver seems to be in his life–and how happy he is–his dramatic change back to “the dark side” feels a bit bizarre.
Source: GameSpot
