Cobra Kai Season 4 Must Learn 3 Lessons From Karate Kid’s Worst Movie

At the end of Cobra Kai Season 3, Johnny and Daniel finally put their differences aside to defeat John Kreese.

But defeating Kreese and Cobra Kai won’t be easy because, in the final moments of the season, the Karate kid villain calls an old friend Terry Silver from The Karate Kid III. Looks like the events of the last film in the 1980s trilogy are going to become a focal point of Cobra Kai Season 4. The Karate Kid III is generally considered the worst of the series and for good reason but what can Cobra KaiDoes the next season learn from the franchise’s weakest movie?

Karate Kid III, revisited

The Karate Kid III takes place about a year after the events of the first film. Daniel LaRusso receives notice from the local karate tournament urging him to defend his title with a brand new rule that states that Daniel must only fight the finalist in competitions. This should be an easy feat for Daniel and some sort of unfair rule for its competitors.

LaRusso can’t wait to go, but Mr. Miyagi is against it. You never know why, but Miyagi’s approach to karate has always emphasized personal growth rather than the actual fighting part. It’s an awkwardly executed callback to the first movie, but it’s also nowhere near that movie’s biggest offense. And despite this fragile argument, Daniel decides to refuse out of respect for his master.

But it looks like Daniel will soon have no choice because John Kreese is back and still holds a huge grudge. He is also in bad shape: he has lost all of his karate students and he has serious financial problems. This certainly makes sense since the former Cobra Kai students seemed quite disillusioned with their sensei, but why isn’t Kreese in jail for trying to outright murder Johnny Lawrence.

Kreese calls his old friend from the Vietnam War, the ridiculously rich and wonderfully bonkers Terry Silver. Terry puts everything on hold (for the next few weeks my business is strictly revenge) and is dedicated to securing Kreeses revenge on Daniel and Miyagi. This is one of the perks of being friends with wealthy weirdos.

Meet Terry Silver

Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) is the best part of Karate Kid III. Thomas Ian Griffith goes out of his way with this role, and it’s fun to watch. I thought Sato and Chozen were cartoon villains, but this guy makes up evil by 100 all you can do is laugh at this point. Griffith is clearly having fun with this role her Terry Silver knows when to be subtle and when to be overdone.

Man is a master manipulator. In front of ordinary people, he is charming and charming. As soon as he’s alone, he’s a pure psychotic, evil villain with a cackling villain laugh.

Terrys’ evil plan is to create a rift between Daniel and Mr. Miyagi and then have Daniel receive a victory royal from the deranged bad boy, Mike Barnes. Oh, and he wants to set up a bunch of Cobra Kai dojos across the country Oh, and dump toxic waste. (This was in the late 1980s. Weak environmental messages were popular at this time).

But Daniel does not want to enter the tournament. So Terry sends Mike and his friends to harass Daniel to compete. These guys make the Cobra Kai bullies in the first movie look like Cub Scouts.

Mike and his lackeys rob Mr. Miyagis ‘store, destroy his property, threaten to rape Daniels’ friend Jessica, then nearly murder Daniel and Jessica while climbing. Under duress, Daniel registers for the tournament.

It was a stupid plan on Mike Barness’s part. If he kills Daniel, Daniel cannot compete, and Mike goes to jail. If Mike kills Jessica, then hell will still be in jail and still won’t be able to compete. He’s lucky Daniel doesn’t have the time or the foresight to contemplate this.

Here’s where Mr. Miyagis’ character takes a beating. In the first film, Mr. Miyagi supports Daniel in competition when he realizes Cobra Kai will not leave him alone. In Karate Kid II, he lets Daniel fight Chozen because Kumikos’ life was in danger. Here? Mr. Miyagi refuses to coach Daniel for the tournament even though Mike Barnes attempted to kill Daniel and Jessica.

It’s basically the same situation as the first movie. It seems like the wrong time for Mr. Miyagi to double his karate practice restrictions. This is also what prompts Daniel to train with Terry Silver at Cobra Kai.

This is a very contrived way of provoking a conflict between Daniel and Mr. Miyagi. It doesn’t even take long for Daniel to leave Cobra Kai and for Mr. Miyagi to resume training. Of course, Daniel beats Mike Barnes with a highly anti-climactic flip, it’s not a crane kick.

It’s like that The Karate Kid The saga ends at least until Miyagi moves to Boston and begins coaching Hilary Swank in the 90s. It is undeniably the worst movie of the original trilogy, but with Cobra Kai willing to borrow heavily from the movie, is there anything the Netflix series can borrow from the Terry Silver story?

Here is three lessons Cobra Kai Season 4 must learn from Karate Kid III.

3. The character must evolve

This is the biggest problem with Cobra Kai. It never feels like Johnny and Daniel evolved as human beings between the movies and the show. Instead of, they are middle-aged men still clinging to a small high school theater.

Remember at the end of the first movie, when Johnny presented the trophy to Daniel and said, all is well, LaRusso? It was only 10 seconds, but it was real character development. At that moment, Johnny realized that Kreese was a manipulative bastard and Daniel deserved to win. He was disappointed but not angry at having lost. He learned something.

But at the start of Cobra KaiJohnny is a bitter and resentful loser and Daniel is an arrogant asshole. The two have a lot in common and could have been true friends much earlier. Every time they took steps towards growth and maturation, they took two steps back in the same episode.

It was more than frustrating to watch two characters make progress, only to regress minutes later for three consecutive seasons. At the end of season 3, Johnny and Daniel are finally on the same page and merged their dojos against Kreeses Cobra Kai. Hopefully in Season 4 the writers won’t make the mistake of creating more conflict between the two. They just became allies start from there.

2. Let the bad guy do his thing

The only reference Cobra Kai made it so far Karate Kid III Daniel admitted to his daughter that he had already joined Cobra Kai. But that is about to change in Season 4 with Terry’s return. This guy is a big bad guy. Let him be as deliciously, psychotically bad and manipulative as he was in the movie.

Terry was the best part of Karate Kid III. He could easily be the most entertaining character in Cobra Kai Season 4 too. I just hope the show can come up with something more creative than Terry driving a wedge between Daniel and Johnny (like he did with Daniel and Miyagi). Instead, the franchise’s best villain has to do something new that is always in line with his character.

1. Keep some characters in the past

Cobra Kai has a habit of unnecessarily squeezing out all the characters that have appeared in the movies. Season 3 featured two ex-girlfriends of Daniels, but there’s one character that Season 4 could (but probably shouldn’t) reintroduce: Jessica.

There is nothing false with performances by Robyn Livelys. She’s just the designated female character who doesn’t have much to do. Jessica wasn’t even Daniels’ girlfriend, they were just friends (the result of a script rewrite due to Macchio and Livelys’ awkwardness eleven years in age), and she was sent back to Ohio even before the film was over. Bringing Jessica back would be a waste of time and serve no purpose other than pure nostalgia.

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