REVIEW: Cobra Kai – Season 6 Part 3 (2025)

Television Reviews

I dreaded Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3. It wasn’t that a show I loved was coming to an end, at least not anymore; it was the worry that the show had run out of gas just as it was crossing the finish line, that it was overstaying its welcome to squeeze out another season and struggling to find a reason to hang around. The first two parts of the season, which was divided into three sets of five episodes, were slower than Cobra Kai usually is, especially Part 2, which was mired in what seemed like unnecessary subplots and tangents, even one or two I enjoyed, as it dragged the final karate competition on too long and seemingly undid some excellent character work. After that, this final run of episodes feels like a miracle, an ending that brings the whole season – and, really, the whole show – together, that returns to Cobra Kai’s classic themes and leaves every character in what feels like exactly the right place, going all the way back to The Karate Kid.

After the riot at the Sekai Taikai that led to the death of a contestant, the tournament has been canceled, with Johnny Lawrence, Daniel LaRusso, and their students going back to their normal lives, karate a distant memory. But when an opportunity to finish the Sekai Taikai presents itself – if all the participating senseis agree to it – Daniel struggles with what’s best for the kids, while Johnny sees one final shot at redemption. Meanwhile, as Cobra Kai regroups, John Kreese finds himself at a crossroads, while the students wonder if the Way of the Fist is for them, and the Iron Dragons – with Terry Silver’s backing – plan to take the tournament by overwhelming force… no matter what.

As the trailers for Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 emerged over the past couple of weeks, I decided that the worst thing to happen to the show in its final season was the extended episode order from the usual ten to an epic-looking fifteen. Having seen Part 3, I believe that even more. The series wraps up perfectly in these final five installments, and the lagging it did beforehand was almost certainly because the writers now had to stretch their normal storytelling window across another half a season. And while Part 3 manages to give every subplot a satisfying payoff, some of them could have been cut without lessening the final season… or the entire show. That being said, it’s hard to care anymore because the number of plotlines it closes while still giving the characters more development, furthering their arcs before closing them perfectly, bringing home themes of redemption, forgiveness, self-determination, the importance of family and friends, the rebuilding of bridges long burnt, the endless series of chances to do the right thing if you look for them, the passing on of wisdom and honor to the next generation, the immortality of those we’ve lost when we keep them in our hearts, and how much the 80s kicked total ass, is astonishing.

Who’d have thought, right? I remember Roger Ebert’s review of The Karate Kid from 1984 (not that I read it in 1984; I’m not that old), where he said he never expected a movie called The Karate Kid to be one of the best films of the year, or to be a surprisingly human story about the unlikeliest of friendships between two very different people. Cobra Kai has followed in that tradition beautifully, and while it was billed as a comic revival of the movies with the first film’s villain as the hero, everyone expected some laughs and little more. Here we are, and Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 brings home a long-form saga about former enemies becoming friends and imparting the lessons that shaped them onto a younger generation that’s been poisoned by wokeness, turned into spoiled, weak drama queens who will never reach their full potential because they’re surrounded by overprotective, neurotic scolds who won’t let them. Cobra Kai is a show for the modern era while still feeling timeless, and the story comes full circle in the end… and not always in the ways you expect.

For example, something I loved seeing at the beginning of Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 is that not only have Johnny and Daniel made the kids in their charge better, but they’ve shaped the world around them. The Valley has been reformed through their efforts, their old-school masculinity and devotion to hard work and bettering oneself. I don’t want to say too much, but people who spurned them in earlier seasons now seem to realize that the world needs Daniel and Johnny’s versions of karate. Invoking a very different film, it reminded me of the opening line of The Departed: “I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me.” Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso enact a much more positive version of that notion than Frank Costello in that movie, getting those in The Valley to understand that their kids and their community needed a couple of disciplined, dedicated, results-driven teachers to give them what Johnny and Daniel’s replacements couldn’t. Just like us, the characters in Cobra Kai want more karate from these guys, and I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that they get it.

In terms of the characters, Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 exquisitely wraps up everyone’s arc, and it does so in lots of unexpected ways. The phrase “subverting expectations” is a pejorative nowadays because it’s been turned into a shortcut for cheap shock value, often destroying characters to try to surprise the audience (or push an agenda). But it doesn’t have to be; in the hands of talented writers who understand the world they’re crafting and its inhabitants, it can be a marvelous storytelling tool, like when Joss Whedon would do it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his other shows. As it does in everything else, Cobra Kai bucks the modern trend and subverts expectations in ways that are true to the characters and the show’s themes and story. I wondered how some of these arcs would wrap up, especially since the way the story had unfolded in the earlier parts of the season seemed to suggest not everyone could get a satisfying ending. But Cobra Kai pulls it off beautifully, and everyone leaves on what feels like the perfect note. It even makes me understand why certain characters who didn’t need to come back made their returns, and like a Swiss watch, everything clicks by the end.

Most relieving for me was that Johnny and Miguel, after being sidelined earlier (especially in Part 2), come to the fore once again, where they belong. There’s plenty of time for Daniel, Sam, Tory, Robby, and the rest, but these guys needed to take center stage for a while, and they do. This is another problem not only with extending the episode count but splitting the season into three parts: Cobra Kai is designed to be binged season by season, and if they cut some of the fat from earlier and released the whole season at once, it would have flowed much better, and nobody would have felt as short-changed as they did. And while Daniel gets a magnificent arc in these last episodes, Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 is really Johnny Lawrence’s story, with the narrative returning to what it was when the show began, much like Breaking Bad did in its last episode. Johnny is still searching for redemption, still trying to turn around a life that had gone off the rails after Daniel defeated him forty years ago, and now, he’s got a new family that needs him to take care of them. Meanwhile, Miguel is once more watching others live their lives as he sits on the sidelines, before he found purpose in Cobra Kai. The series makes the point several times that everything they’ve been through together has brought them here, and it’s because of each other that they have the opportunity to be great – Miguel as he begins his life and Johnny to make up for the one he wasted. And Daniel, who has everything on paper, is now doubting the seemingly perfect life he led, wondering if he remembers the past the right way and whether his future is what he thought it should be. The places Cobra Kai brings these three central characters and how it does it are terrific.

This extends to the show’s villains as well. John Kreese, Terry Silver, Kim, and Sensei Wolf are all in positions similar to Daniel and Johnny, faced with circumstances that allow them to choose who they want to be, what their legacies will be, what mark they want to leave on the world and on karate. I won’t say who chooses what or how, or even what their choices are, but even through its string of heavies, Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 examines its themes and delivers satisfying and logical conclusions for each arc. Here again, things I was sure I didn’t want to see happened, and I changed my mind as I watched how expertly they were all executed. Even those with the darkest hearts are more human than we think, and that’s true of the students these senseis have spent years perverting into violent psychopaths, too. Cobra Kai is something truly special in the way it makes us reevaluate what we thought was irredeemable evil without making it feel like a schmaltzy copout. Redemption may be possible, but it has to be earned, and the show never takes the easy way out – for the heroes or the villains.

After all this talk of deep themes and character work, don’t let me give you the impression that Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 isn’t fun. There’s plenty of humor and laugh-out-loud moments, like a montage of Johnny trying to dress right for a special occasion, Chozen on a blind date that never should have happened, or Hawk and Demetri developing a ridiculous new method of karate training. There’s also one last shot at wokeness early on, and it doesn’t come from Johnny or even Daniel; however, it is hilarious and satisfying, a final message that we’re done with that garbage. Aside from the humor, there’s a lot of great karate action, with the Sekai Taikai bringing with it big confrontations between formidable opponents and an escalating scale of danger from the Iron Dragons as the good guys find themselves up against fighting styles they may not be able to overcome. But what you’ll get more than anything are a ton of get-up-and-cheer moments, and I mean that literally; you’ll jump out of your seat when you see certain developments, hear certain musical cues, or watch certain karate moves make their comebacks. Characters say things you never thought you’d hear them say, and every time, it’s a show-stopper that demonstrates how far they’ve come. The pacing is pitch-perfect as well, with each episode flowing seamlessly into the next, leaving you wanting to see what happens next. (And there’s an epilogue after the last title card that you absolutely won’t want to miss.)

There’s a reason why I invoked a bunch of classic movies and shows in this review. After those last two rocky episode clusters, Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 cements the show as being in their league. This has been a relatable, human story with an avalanche of fun and memorable characters, one that I believe will be loved for generations. What I look for more than anything else in a piece of art is something that speaks to our humanity, that makes us enjoy it on a base level while resonating in ways many stodgier dramas simply don’t. Cobra Kai did for an audience hungry for that kind of resonance what the dojo did for Johnny’s students: it made us feel like someone got us, saw the world the way we did, wondered what had happened to it, and then set about fixing it. Its conclusion ties it all together magnificently, and while there’s always sorrow in seeing something this special go, its tagline is truer now than ever: Cobra Kai never dies.

Let us know what you thought of Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 in the comments!

***

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