(by Brady Langmann esquire.com)
Back in 1986—a year that also saw the releases of Top Gun and Hoosiers—we laid our eyes on The Karate Kid II. And while all of you adults who still dress up as Young Johnny Lawrence for Halloween every year, just so you can scream at your kids, "You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you, little twerp?" will probably fight me on this, The Karate Kid II was infinitely more mediative than its predecessor. It damn near quadrupled the stakes of a silly karate tournament. I'll defend The Karate Kid II until the day I die. In fact, I think Ralph Macchio should've hung it up then and there.
We got The Karate Kid III instead. A coked-up Terry Silver, bonsai tree drama, a clearly too-old-to-be-playing-a-kid-anymore Macchio. The Karate Kid III turned out to be crusty backwash that wasn't remedied until the 2018 debut of Cobra Kai.
As I wrapped my Labor Day weekend binge of the new season of Cobra Kai, I got to thinking about The Karate Kid III. Not just because, with the introduction of Silver, Cobra Kai has been flooded with The Karate Kid III's regrettable lore. Hell, Mike Barnes is even back! No. Watching Season Five of Cobra Kai—which I enjoyed, for the most part—gave me a sinking feeling. Seeing Daniel LaRusso once again shitting his diaper and asking everyone else to clean it up, the kiddos switching sides again and again and again, and Johnny Lawrence reach his seventh coming-of-age, I couldn't help but think: Cobra Kai needs to stop while it's ahead. Or else we're going to see what Cobra Kai's version of The Karate Kid III is.
The problem is, that's not gonna happen. Cobra Kai's creative team Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg have long made known their plans to expand what they've dubbed the Miyagi-verse into a full dojo's worth of spinoffs. Those plans likely include more Cobra Kai. Season Six has all but been officially confirmed. Macchio already hinted that footage exists for future seasons. "There's stuff that they wrote in Season Three that didn't happen until Season Four, 'cause there wasn't any more room in Season Three," Macchio told ComicBook.com. "There's stuff that was in Season Five that we know we shot that is being held for the future if we get that green light, so there's more to come, we hope."
Macchio's comments are a little confusing, though. And Hurwitz quasi-contradicted them in a recent interview with Games Radar. "We have filmed nothing that’s in Season Six," he said. "There may have been some things filmed in Season Five that got cut out of the season. Some of those character or story moments may appear in a future season. But there were no actual scenes filmed for Season Six." Regardless, Schlossberg chimed in, "There’s no official response to [whether or not there will be a Season Six], except we have lots of ideas. There’s time and places to make official things, we’re not at that place right now." Yeah. More Cobra Kai is a safe bet.
Regardless, Cobra Kai's creators do have an endgame in sight. It's just a matter of when the series will reach that point. "We do have a place where it’s all going, but that doesn’t mean the world has to stop there," Hurwitz told Total Film. "We have lots of ideas of continuing [the universe] and keeping the Karate Kid vibes going through other stories and other shows and different formats for that."
Listen, do I really want Cobra Kai to end? No. But there's only so much teen angst, daddy drama, and Valley karate hijinks left to play out in the story Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg have set up. We still need the Mr. Miyagi origin story, at all costs. Maybe there's even an entirely new, LaRusso and Miyagi-less story to tell. Spoilers ahead, mind you, but Season Five sets up a perfect final run for Cobra Kai. Johnny has a baby, Kreese shows up as the big baddie one last time, and all the kids finish the fight on the sides they're supposed to be on. (Except for Kenny. Come to the good side!). As for Daniel LaRusso? Eh. I don't know. Maybe his wife really should leave him for good.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a41125032/cobra-kai-season-6/
