Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy (sir).
After seven years, Cobra Kai has finally come to a close. It's been a long road. Cobra Kai has been some of my most popular content on this blog, and, for that, it will always have a soft spot in my heart. I love these characters and this story, and, as goofy as it is, I'm sad to see it go. But we had some great moments and some great seasons along the way. So here it is: my final ranking of the Cobra Kai seasons.
6. Season 2
I've enjoyed every season of Cobra Kai, but I do find season two to be the worst by a good bit. The sophomore entry in this series struggles in finding the balance that season one had. There are some new characters that really work, and Kreese's return is awesome, but Cobra Kai loses a bit of what made season one special. Daniel and Johnny are at their most frustrating here, and Miguel is not the endearing nerd that he was in season one. I do enjoy the final episodes as Kreese takes Cobra Kai from Johnny and the fight breaks out at the school, but this is definitely a rockier road to get there.
5. Season 3
Season three feels like Cobra Kai at its most ridiculous, which is both good and bad. On the good side, the full-fledged karate war is a lot of fun. It may be insane, but it is fun. The main draw here is that Daniel and Johnny finally have a common enemy: Kreese. With his takeover of Cobra Kai, we see Daniel and Johnny truly start to end their feud and team up. I think some of the characters are at their worst here, however, and that knocks the season down. Robby, Tory, and Hawk are all really horrible in this season, and, although it's nice when they get redeemed, it can be very difficult to watch them when they are so horrible and so mean. This is still a good season, but it definitely has a lot of problems.
4. Season 6
Season six has the highest and lowest moments of Cobra Kai. The first ten episodes are the worst stretch of episodes that this show has to offer. The final three episodes are the best stretch of episodes in this show. Maybe it's recency bias and maybe it's an overreaction, but those final three landed the ship so well that I bumped season six up from my last spot to the fourth spot. It's still a rocky road to get to those final moments, but once you do, it's awesome. It's always a good thing when the series finale is arguably the best episode of the show, and that is the case with Cobra Kai. Sure, I don't like the Sekai Taikai. The new villains are bad. But this final season nailed the ending to this forty-year karate saga, and for that, it gets a lot of credit.
3. Season 1
Who ever thought that a spin-off TV show starring the villain of The Karate Kid would be good? No one. But Cobra Kai manages to be funny, heartfelt, and truly compelling above all else. Yes, it's ridiculous. The fact that Daniel and Johnny are still into karate forty years after The Karate Kid is insane, but if you suspend that disbelief, this is a great sequel show to The Karate Kid. The heart of this season is the paralleled relationship between Johnny and Miguel and then Robby and Daniel. We see Miguel gain his confidence and become our new karate kid under Johnny, which is just great. The entire season builds to this epic, climactic fight between Robby and Miguel where so much emotion and meaning and complexity is brought to the table. I would've never expected a Karate Kid spin-off to be this well-written and great, but Cobra Kai is.
2. Season 5
Season five is where the show truly shifts from complex, morally gray characters to a good versus bad story, and I'm all for it. We see that all of our previously villainous kids have realized what Cobra Kai is, especially now that Silver has taken over, and that is awesome. Robby and Miguel finally reconcile. Sam and Tory finally reconcile. This feels like the season that the show has been building up to since the beginning. I feel like, in a perfect world, we could've condensed season six and made a 15-episode fifth season that closed out the narrative perfectly. As is, I still think season five is great and delivers us the best villain and some of the best character payoff of the entire show.
1. Season 4
Season four feels like everything season three wanted to be. The stakes are higher than they've ever been. There's good and bad on both sides. Tory and Robby are much better and much more well-rounded characters in this season. We see the good in Cobra Kai, but we also see the danger. Daniel and Johnny are finally working together, albeit in a very tense, uncomfortable way. Their dynamic is one of the two things that makes this season the best. The other is Terry Silver. It feels like the show needed a good kick in the pants, and that's exactly what Silver is. He is Kreese with all the restraints pulled off. He is a complete nutjob that has infinitely more resources and power than his partner, and that makes him the scariest bad guy on the show. You introduce the scariest bad guy, you get the highest stakes and the most tension...and it is awesome. This season is everything the show wants to get right: characters, tension, comedy, and some great, exciting karate. This is peak Cobra Kai, and thinking about it reminds me how much I'm going to miss this show.
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