Warning: This story contains spoilers for Season 6, Part 1 of “Cobra Kai.”
The first of three parts of the action-packed “Cobra Kai” Season 6 just hit Netflix, bringing with it a cliffhanger ending that will have fans on the edge of their seats until Part 2 drops in November.
“Cobra Kai,” a “Karate Kid” spinoff that follows Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and the next generation of San Fernando Valley teenage fighters, kicked off in 2018. Six years later, the show is in its final season, with an extended 15 episodes split up into three parts.
Part 1, or Episodes 1 through 5, dropped on Netflix July 18, picking up right where Season 5 left off — “Karate Kid Part III” villain Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) has been arrested, stopping his plan to take the brutal teachings of Cobra Kai worldwide via an international karate tournament called the Sekai Taikai.
Going into Season 6, Silver’s gone, the teens have worked out their interpersonal drama (for now) and Johnny and his girlfriend, Carmen (Vanessa Rubio), are expecting a child together. Meanwhile, Daniel, Johnny and Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) are training the Valley’s karate prodigies under one dojo to prepare for the upcoming Sekai Taikai.
But this is “Cobra Kai,” a show with a fight at the center of nearly every episode.
In the final moments of Season 5, the show’s central villain, John Kreese (Martin Kove), came back into the picture. Kreese had been in prison since Season 4, after he was framed by Silver. Now, he’s faked his death and escaped.
There’s no peace in the Valley yet.
Here’s what’s happened in Season 6 so far, and, more importantly, why, according to the cast and crew.
How does Season 6, Part 1 end?
The first five episodes primarily see Miyagi-Do prepare for the Sekai Taikai and confront any lingering issues between the teachings of Daniel and Johnny.
One of the first major obstacles comes with the reveal that only six students can compete in the team portion of the Sekai Taikai, and two — one boy and one girl — can compete in the individual competition to be world champion.
An evaluation in Episode 4 determines the six competitors to be Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), Sam (Mary Mouser), Robby (Tanner Buchanan), Tory (Peyton List), Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) and Devon (Oona O’Brien). The notable exclusion is Hawk (Jacob Bertrand), objectively one of the dojo’s best fighters and Season 4’s All Valley champion.
Episode 5 follows Miyagi-Do’s final preparations to travel to Spain for the competition, including a series of one-on-one fights to determine the team captains and who will compete in the individual portion of the tournament.
In the opening scene of the episode, Tory briefly encounters Kreese, who all the while has reunited with Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim) in South Korea to train fighters for the Sekai Taikai. Kreese tells Tory she’ll “never belong” anywhere other than Cobra Kai, but she sends him away. Then Tory’s mother, who has been battling an illness throughout the show, dies.
Tory withdraws from Robby and her newfound friendship with Sam. When she arrives to the dojo to fight against Sam for the team captain title, she brings heightened emotions, seemingly hoping to exorcise her sadness and anger on the mat.
After the rest of the group learns about her mother’s death, Daniel, Amanda (Courtney Henggeler) and Robby — though not Johnny — insist on calling off the fight against Tory’s wishes. She storms out of Miyagi-Do and says she quits.
In Part 1’s final scene, Miyagi-Do arrives at the Sekai Taikai with Hawk filling in for Tory. From across the mat, Daniel and Johnny are finally confronted with Kreese’s return, as students wearing Cobra Kai gis, including Tory, arrive at the tournament.
Why does Tory go back to Kreese and Cobra Kai?
Tory’s defection from Miyagi-Do back to Cobra Kai might come as a surprise, and certainly serves as a cliffhanger as the rest of the crew looks on in shock across the mat. After all, her boyfriend, Robby, is still fighting with Miyagi-Do, and in Season 5, Kim Da-Eun was a source of torment and abuse at Cobra Kai.
But List says for Tory, it felt like the “only option.”
“After not being captain at Miyagi-Do and having no plans for the foreseeable future, you know, no college, she has to turn to the one person who she knows will be there for her no matter what,” List tells TODAY.com.
That person is Kreese, List says.
“For some reason he sees something in Tory, and she feels like it’s her only option, even though it’s not, but in that moment, she can’t see clearly,” she says.
Jon Hurwitz, one of the creators of “Cobra Kai,” adds that there is a sort of “purity” in the relationship between Tory and Kreese specifically. In Season 4 at the All Valley championship, he didn’t give her specific directives like he did with Johnny. (“Sweep the leg,” anyone?)
“Instead, he told her to fight her own way, win her own way,” Hurwitz says.
So when her world flips, she goes back to what she knows.
“She’s going through so much pain, and Cobra Kai is a dojo that at times is able to help you channel that pain to victory,” he says.
But when Tory arrives to the tournament and sees her friends and boyfriend across the mat, she appears grim.
“I think it hurt like hell,” List says of that moment. “I think she regretted it in that moment. You know, you make the decision, but then you see everyone … I mean, I knew even just standing there being the character that it felt really bad.”
There’s seemingly a jump in time between Tory quitting the dojo and the Sekai Taikai. There’s a scene where Robby tries to call Tory, which she ignores. But on screen, there’s no further attempts at communications between Tory and Robby, or anyone else from Miyagi-Do.
Buchanan says it seems that his character “didn’t do his job of being, first off, a good friend or a good boyfriend.”
“He didn’t even seem to reach out and try to give her condolences or anything. … I really don’t know what happened,” he says. “He’s bad with conflict.
“I think he thought that (Tory) probably just needed space, is basically where I think he was coming from, and thought, ‘Well, maybe she just has some space, and we’ll go to this tournament and I’ll do my thing, and then come back and take care of it when I come back,'” he adds.
Only time will tell how the drama between the teens will shake out on the mat.
Part 2 of “Cobra Kai” will hit Netflix on Nov. 28.
