Cobra Kai

Episode 10 of Cobra Kai Season 5 starts with Kreese resigning himself to spending the rest of his days in prison. He reflects on the mistakes he's made ...

Kenny also realizes the error of his ways too and is shameful over his part to play in all this. Barnes jumps in and helps change the dynamic of the fight and the duo come out on top. When the transfer is complete, all of Cobra Kai see Silver admit to paying off the ref for Tory’s victory. He drives out and picks up Daniel by the side of the road. At the same time, Demetri works to try and upload the footage while Hawk holds off the kids who arrive, led by Kenny. Although Silver has deleted the footage from his attack on Stingray, he hasn’t deleted the confession he made to Tory about paying off the ref.

Netflix's Cobra Kai has clocked in 100%, 90%, 90% and 95% critics scores for the first four seasons, and now season 5 has arrived with another 100% score, ...

Season 5 looks to be another high quality offering from the team, and it’s not a matter of if it hits number one on Netflix, but when, and for how long it will stay there. Cobra Kai, however, is in the rare Netflix category of shows that never have to fear renewal, and so far, Netflix doesn’t have to worry about it putting out a stinker of a season, which has not happened yet. The show has been a star-maker, allowing Xolo Mariduena to nab the role of Blue Beetle for DC, and has elevated Peyton List to become a bonafide Gen Z superstar online. It’s almost the perfect Netflix show, one with a low budget that both critics and fans love and a seemingly endless fountain ideas of how to continue the story as characters shuffle between dojos and compete in yearly karate tournaments. 100% from fans too, but that’s based on a tiny amount of reviews, given that it just arrived a few hours ago. But finally C) almost always reviews very, very well, unlike a lot of other Netflix top hits as of late.

Crossing the streams with its sequels, the fifth season of "Cobra Kai" features heavy dollops of the second and third "The Karate Kid" movies while continue ...

Five seasons in, the show has already surpassed any reasonable expectations, developing a life of its own that proves it wasn't just "Karate Kid"-ing around. The seasons have also begun to exhibit a familiar pattern, starting and finishing strong while dragging a bit in the middle. The kids, in fact, have as many shifting allegiances as the elder generation, whose AARP-eligible karate masters continue to prove remarkably spry.

It's fun to see the villains of two Karate Kid sequels connecting over dinner. A recap of “Molé,” episode 2 of season five of 'Cobra Kai' on Netflix.

• Possibly the funniest moment of the episode comes after Johnny suggests they “shake the tree to get the apples.” “Or we could climb the tree ourselves,” Robby suggests. I have to think this isn’t the end of Tory’s crisis of conscience, of course. It makes for a heartwarming moment of deep respect from Johnny, who says, “That’s about the most badass thing I’ve ever seen.” It goes a familiar route: People keep warning Miguel about his dad being bad news, but he wants to believe the kindness and intelligence he sees are genuine. And it’s fun, as a fan of the franchise, to see the villains of two Karate Kid sequels connecting over dinner, relating over their rivalries with the same man. But it’s a satisfying endpoint for now, and I’m glad Miguel will soon be back in the show’s main orbit again. It does feel a bit abrupt how quickly it ends, with Miguel realizing his dad is exactly the man Carmen said he was — and presumably forgiving her for lying to him. He even demands to see Miguel’s phone, though he stops and apologizes just before he can notice a photo of Carmen. It’s basically a warning that the word “honor” is going to pop up 50 times in this episode. When she asks him why he’s a sensei, he simply answers, “Honor.” Reflecting on the time he thought he lost his honor but found it again, he wisely says, “No one can take honor from you. “Long, Long Way From Home” set up an irresistible storyline with Chozen helping defeat Cobra Kai from the inside, but by the end of the aptly named “Molé,” everything is out in the open. The episode begins with a flashback to Okinawa in 1972, as a young Chozen gets schooled about honor by his uncle Sato (last played by the late Danny Kamekona in The Karate Kid Part II).

Karate's bad boy gets a new perspective in 'Cobra Kai' Season 5. But what's next for Mike Barnes in a potential Season 6.

So it was intense, to say the least. And as horrible an experience as that was that I wouldn't wish on anybody, I wouldn't really trade it for anything. I was standing stationary and I had to jump and land a couple of feet on the ground. There was a tremendous amount I didn't know and I needed to learn very quickly. I was a very young actor. I think things got pretty dark for Mike Barnes for a while. So it was a lot of fun. That flips the switch and gives us the return of the bad boy. I was dealing with a pretty significant shoulder injury, which did make things a little more difficult. “He's a more well-rounded, multi-dimensional character with different colors, which reflected the fact that it was 30 years down the road.” I probably got a message from him maybe in July of last year. He also wrote a cookbook called The Modern Gentleman and a self-help book called Way of the Cobra: Unleash Your Inner Badass with a sequel coming in October 2022.

Cobra Kai debuted its new season on Netflix this Friday, and it's precisely as chaotic as I've implied above. The season finale of The Karate Kid sequel series ...

The shitty one in the retail mall. If you ask me, the best conclusion to Cobra Kai would be bringing it all back to the beginning. The OG Karate Kid meanie spent this season in an odd sort of non-redemptive vision quest, but whatever! The season finale sees the culmination of the Silver vs. The season finale of The Karate Kid sequel series sees LaRusso, Lawrence, and Chozen pull up to The Cobra Kai team has to make sure there's another Little Lawrence out there for the 2036 reboot of The Karate Kid, right? But there are some redeemable kids on the Bad side, and vice versa. The Good Guys battle that's been brewing since the very end of Season Three. [Cobra Kai ](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a41125032/cobra-kai-season-6/) [Season Six](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a41125032/cobra-kai-season-6/) needs to kill Daniel LaRusso. We get a few worthwhile gags along the way, with the Johnny-as-an-Uber-driver bit by far standing out as one of this season's best moments. [Cobra Kai ](https://www.esquire.com/preview/entertainment/tv/a37414660/netflix-cobra-kai-season-5/) [Season Five](https://www.esquire.com/preview/entertainment/tv/a37414660/netflix-cobra-kai-season-5/) finale begins, essentially, with Daniel LaRusso, Johnny Lawrence, Chozen, and Mike Barnes in one place. Did any child of the '80s ever, ever think that a 60-year-old [Ralph Macchio](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a35067193/ralph-macchio-william-zabka-cobra-kai-season-3-interview/) would share the screen with all of his [OG trilogy](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a35091708/cobra-kai-season-3-karate-kid-2-kumiko-chozen/) kiddie villains, all at once, looking like that pointing-fingers Spider-Man meme?

This episode has it all: a little relationship drama, a little karate, and a new appearance from a character from the movies. A recap of “Playing With Fire ...

Either way, “Playing With Fire” feels like a return to the Cobra Kai we know and love. Demetri has the right idea when he and Eli take Miguel to a jewelry store to buy an expensive octopus charm for Sam. That’s continuing this season: In the tank, she sees various characters demanding different things from her, with a hallucination of Tory transforming into a hallucination of Sam herself. On one side, Demetri and Eli show some adorable (and justified) concern about the lack of emojis in Sam’s texts; on the other side, Yasmine and Moon urge Sam to keep it cool and wait until they can talk in person. Of course, this immediately leads to a fight between Mike and Chozen, the latter of whom mistakes their shadowboxing for a real fight (and already beat down the “goons” who, it turns out, were Mike’s employees). Still, it takes some time to himself — and a welcome heart-to-heart with Miguel, whom he offers some simple but genuinely good advice — to remind him that he isn’t. In the episode’s closing moments, we see exactly what that means for Mike Barnes, who finds his furniture store burning to the ground. The truth, which Daniel learns when he grabs the phone from Mike, is that he owns a furniture store passed down from his father-in-law. The episode builds up the tension around “karate’s bad boy” so much that it becomes a little obvious he won’t be the bully Daniel and Chozen expect him to be. With everyone back in the Valley, “Playing With Fire” feels like a back-to-basics episode of Cobra Kai. As Daniel and Mike catch up, we get a drastically different picture of the needlessly cruel mercenary bully of The Karate Kid Part III. Still, the classic series of misunderstandings that follows is great fun, starting with the two handsaws he removes from his trunk (“good for cutting bone,” Chozen notes) and continuing with the phone conversation Daniel overhears.

Pay for my tattoo of an Olive Garden breadstick, with little steaming squiggles coming out of the ends, and I'll get it right now. OG 4 lyfe, baby. Come at my ...

At the end of the episode, the trio all take a bite of a breadstick, in unison. This isn't like the Applebee's scene in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, where it's part of the joke, that the Bobby fam is having this big hoorah at an Applebee's, treating it like they're at Ruth's Chris. Come at my suburban Olive Garden—Greentree, PA, the GOAT—and I will defend it with my very life. Turn out that, in an effort to make Robby and Miguel best friends, Johnny invited the two for a come-to-Jesus at the Italian ( [okay, "Italian"](https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a19562071/olive-garden-meatball-pizza-bowl/)) mecca. There's some humor going on in Cobra Kai, but I actually believe, in my heart of hearts, that money was transferred here, with the intent of Johnny Lawrence earnestly speaking about the healing power of breadsticks. Pay for my tattoo of an Olive Garden breadstick, with little steaming squiggles coming out of the ends, and I'll get it right now.

Fans of 'Cobra Kai' might have been surprised to see characters possibly die in the finale episode. So did anyone in 'Cobra Kai' season 5 die?

After trying to get them to stop fighting, things immediately went south when one of them stabbed Kreese with a shiv, leaving him for dead on the lunchroom floor in the midst of pandemonium. But given how things ended up—especially with Kreese out of jail—Cobra Kai season 6 will no doubt be the biggest one yet. While we still don't know the specifics of what the police officer told them, the show immediately jumped back to the prison where Kreese's body was wheeled into a coroner's office to be examined. Luckily, it was revealed that he actually survived the attack, and Mike and Johnny brought him over to Cobra Kai. Folsom tried to comfort him and told him he can do better and turn his life around. After Kreese spent the entire season in prison, there was no way anything could have happened to him...right? He noted that he felt his time was coming to an end and he regretted everything he'd done, since it tainted his legacy on Earth. In one of the most shocking moments in the entire series, Terry Silver and Chozen got into a major fight as the Miyagi-Do students broke into Cobra Kai and the adults went to Silver's place to try to take him down for good. After Miyagi-Do successfully exposed Silver and Cobra Kai's horrible practices to the public, Daniel began to worry over Chozen. As they took jabs at each other, they went into one of Silver's collection rooms, where he got a katana and Chozen revealed he brought his sai swords with him. [Cobra Kai ](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a38584083/cobra-kai-season-5-news-date-cast-spoilers/) [season 5](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a38584083/cobra-kai-season-5-news-date-cast-spoilers/) spoilers because there is a lot to talk about when it comes to that big finale. Well, we have to get to the obvious first.

"Strike First. Strike Hard. No Mercy" Ralph Macchio, William Zabka and the Cobra Kai cast tease the epic fights and higher stakes of season 5.

Ralph Macchio acknowledged the challenges that come with creating a successful program as the television medium continues to evolve. “When they say, Action!, boy, that intensity kicks up a notch.” “Kreese was a parental figure to Tory and a guide. And I think that can open up a door to hopefully some level of understanding.” Every character in this show is carrying a fair share of trauma with them. “I think there’s a really big need for for some unity,” he said. “Daniel is the only one who knows of Terry Silver, and knows the truth of Terry Silver,” Macchio explained. And since he won the bet at the All Valley Karate Tournament, Silver has no opposition in his mission, leaving him room spread his message and influence throughout the San Fernando Valley and beyond. — to expand and take over the map.” Their All Valley Karate Tournament victory against Daniel’s dojo Miyagi-Do and Johnny’s Eagle Fang means Silver’s reign seems imminent as our two heroes are forced, per a mutual agreement with Silver, to close up shop. Over three decades later, the legacy continues as new characters, conflicts, and epic fight scenes have catapulted the ’80s phenomenon back into the pop culture vernacular. Season 5 of the hit martial arts drama is now streaming on Netflix, and audiences everywhere will be witness to a series that is still showing up in top form.

Meanwhile, Mr. Miyagi's prized pupil Daniel LaRusso and Cobra Kai's original bad boy Johnny Lawrence are forced closed the doors to their dojos after losing the ...

One audience reviewer said the show brought him back to his childhood, providing viewers an escape from the turbulence of today. The show got its start on YouTube, which produced three seasons before it stopped making original scripted programming, and was then picked up by Netflix in 2020. The new season picks up with Lawrence going after his student, Miguel Diaz, who went to Mexico in search of his real father. Snake in the grass Terry Silver swept the leg on his Vietnam War buddy and Cobra Kai Karate co-founder John Kreese, landing him in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Back in the Valley, LaRusso confronts another foe from his past. A dark cloud loomed over the city of Los Angeles at the end of Cobra Kai's fourth season.

In the Season 5 premiere of Cobra Kai, Miguel searches for his father as Terry Silver reveals his expansion plan for the dojo.

Silver's voiceover returns, and it is a turning point for Cobra Ka as he addresses all of his students, celebrating that his enemies have been forced to close up shop and Cobra Kai has more students than ever before — but this means Cobra Kai will need a new Sensei. Miguel follows the man he believes is his pop to a colorful outdoor market and is dismayed to see him kiss a pretty young woman and play with a toddler. She goes on about his lack of interest in her life and when he tells her there is more to life than karate, she hangs up. Miguel tries to chat with the child, and he runs off. Miguel easily neutralizes the bouncer and speaks to the leader of the group in Spanish, who lets him go. People are flocking to Cobra Kai's grand opening and Daniel and Chozen watch from a car park nearby. He starts to approach a group of card players and a bouncer stops him. Daniel conveys his fears about Terry Silver and the expansion of Cobra Kai, and is worried Silver will brainwash most of the kids in the Valley. When he heard Miguel was in trouble, he had to do something, and he needed Robbie's help tracking down a man named Hector Salazar. Miguel is happy to reimburse them for their time until he spots the scam: they've taken his bag and now want money in exchange for it. Johnny offers Robbie a Mexican coke, which Robbie tells him is just a regular coke. His spiel is to appeal to a broad range of different people and promises to turn your kid into a warrior.

Who's okay with only having access to half the water park? A recap of “Downward Spiral,” episode 4 of season five of 'Cobra Kai' on Netflix.

Johnny gets the lightest subplot of the episode as he turns to the gig economy for work now that he’s out of a job with a baby on the way. Miguel and Robby have one last facedown at the end of the episode when Johnny comes to pick Robby up. He even calls up Shannon and asks to have Robby for the summer. It’s a nice way to feature a sensei-student pairing that wouldn’t otherwise be possible in the story since Eagle Fang shut down. But from Kenny’s point of view, everything good in his life came from Cobra Kai; before, he was a lonely victim, and now he’s on top of the food chain, surrounded by “friends.” He’s not going to quit now. The biggest conflict, though, is a territory war straight out of West Side Story: The park is split in half, with Cobra Kai restricted to one side and the ex-Miyagi Do and Eagle Fang kids to the other. Robby makes one last attempt, telling her that she’s “part of the problem” if she stays in Cobra Kai. “Don’t tell me the best place for Kenny is Cobra Kai,” Robby says to Tory after they witness his bullying Anthony firsthand. The issue isn’t that Daniel was wrong to be suspicious; we know he was right. But while she has plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the role karate plays in the Valley — both her kids’ and her husband’s lives have been threatened in the past year — she’s never really suffered a personal loss because of it. Daniel admits that he didn’t tell Amanda he was still involved in this war, but it only escalates from there: When Silver bids $30,000 for the treasured bonsai trees Daniel is donating, he taunts Daniel with the idea that he’ll probably just use them for mulch. Back at home, Amanda is understandably pissed at how Daniel embarrassed her in front of the board.

Actor Sean Kanan is back to play the character again after 33 years. Here's what you need to know.

(And this is before Jessica returns in Season 5 and we find out she is the cousin of Daniel LaRusso’s wife, Amanda.) Anyway, the three heavies try to convince Daniel to sign up for the All-Valley Tournament but he refuses. To pay for the repairs to the show, Daniel and not-his-girlfriend Jessica go to retrieve a special bonsai tree that Mr. His plan is to start training Daniel in the “strike first” ethos of Cobra Kai and separate him from Mr. He lives in London, his DMs are open, and he is probably thinking about dessert. Mike takes Snake and Dennis to the bonsai shop where Daniel is hanging out with his girlfriend Jessica (Robyn Lively). Of course, Mike won’t fight fair, kicking Daniel in the old family jewels before deploying some illegal punches to really deliver the pain. Meanwhile, Silver impersonates a poor karate master and tries to get close to Daniel, who has opened a bonsai tree shop in a sketchy part of the city with Mr. Who is even left to terrorize the karate-obsessed teens of the San Fernando Valley and their martial arts aggrieved fathers (and father figures)? Silver’s plan to get Daniel is two-fold and absolutely bonkers. We never get to see that epic fight in this season, so here is a reminder of just who Mike Barnes is, how he started working with Terry Silver, and why he and Daniel have not just beef, but really, really old dry-aged beef. Johnny Lawrence ( [William Zabka](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a35120601/william-zabka-interview-cobra-kai-johnny-lawrence/)) has turned away from the dark side and merged his start-up [Eagle Fang](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a34992512/cobra-kai-eagle-fang-karate/) dojo with Daniel LaRusso’s ( [Ralph Macchio](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a35176504/ralph-macchio-cobra-kai-season-3/)) Miyagi-Do Karate. John Kreese ( [Martin Kove](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a34554787/martin-kove-cobra-kai-interview/)) was [sent to prison in the Season 4 finale](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a38530713/cobra-kai-season-4-ending-explained/) thanks to [Terry Silver](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a38579940/cobra-kai-who-is-terry-silver/) ( [Thomas Ian Griffith](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a38628716/thomas-ian-griffith-cobra-kai-season-4-interview/)) framing him for a beating he didn’t deliver and stealing Cobra Kai from his clutches.

Cobra Kai” Season 5, the latest installment in the popular “Karate Kid” sequel TV series on Netflix, currently has a perfect 100% critics score on Rotten ...

Recent TV shows to achieve a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes include Netflix’s “Mo,” FX/Hulu’s “Reservation Dogs” Season 2, HBO’s “Hacks” Season 1 and Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” Season 1. Season 1 of “Cobra Kai” also has a 100% critics score on the site, while seasons 2 and 3 have a 90% critics score and S4 clocks in at 95%. As of Friday, “Cobra Kai” Season 5 registered a 100% Tomatometer score, based on Rotten Tomatoes’ aggregation of 27 critics ratings, as well as a 96% audience score.

A woman does a jumping kick in the air next to a man in a dojo. Team Karate Center owner Fariborz Azhakh and his daughter, Laila, at their dojo in Woodland ...

“I don’t like a lot of the emphasis on tournaments,” said Bryan Hawkins, a Granada Hills instructor who takes his students to only one tournament every year. First, she took them into a boxing ring where they performed kicks and strike combinations, the sounds of “hi-yas!” and heavy breaths again echoing around the room. Then, they went to a set of monkey bars, where one girl fell to the mat with a thud. “I would say karate is the best sport to be telling the personal and philosophical lessons we’re exploring on the show,” Heald said. Four decades ago, the original “Karate Kid” helped introduce the sport to pop culture. The once robust market of karate magazines and martial arts publications — such as one Matsuda used to publish — had nearly disappeared. And one week, their theater was showing “Enter the Dragon,” the iconic 1973 spy thriller starring Lee as an undercover agent and martial arts master. “I took karate in a dojo for a few weeks when I was a kid,” Heald said with a laugh. “If you apply yourself to this, and you practice and fight in a smart way, you can outwit an opponent and be successful with being of larger size. After attracting millions of views through its first two seasons in 2018 and 2019, which aired on YouTube Premium, the show moved to Netflix and quickly became one of the streaming service’s most-watched titles. “The goal of all martial arts, in my opinion, is developing your competency and your character,” says Fariborz Azhakh, the 60-year-old sensei who has run Team Karate Center for four decades. “‘Cobra Kai’ and ‘Karate Kid’ made it real, so people could relate to it,” Azhakh explains.

The first episode of the season that feels like we're watching Cobra Kai at its best. A recap of “Extreme Measures,” episode 5 of season five of 'Cobra Kai' ...

It sinks in for Amanda just how present this trauma still is for Daniel — the sight of his own bloody knuckles brings him back to that oft-remembered dark lesson from Silver in Part III — and she resolves to cut him some slack. At the end of Part III, Jessica was packing to leave California and return to patch things up with her ex-boyfriend in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio. She was present for a lot of Silver’s shenanigans in 1985 and saw firsthand how badly he traumatized Daniel, forming a friendship with the kid while his goons terrorized him and even assaulted Jessica. Johnny and Daniel’s bromance is the heart of the show, and I missed their interactions in the early episodes this season (and in the later ones last season). Johnny assures Daniel that he and Amanda will get through this rough patch, and Daniel realizes he can’t risk losing his family, owning up to his failures. Johnny is more at peace than ever, with Robby out of Cobra Kai and Kreese in prison, so it makes sense that for once he’d be wary of getting back in the fight. For one, it’s very funny: Johnny repeatedly lies to Miguel and Robby to get them in the same room, and they keep falling for it. But Daniel and Chozen realize they have an anonymous ally when they find a message in the mail accusing Stingray of lying in the testimony that sent Kreese to jail. The moments of familial bliss are a sharp contrast to the scenes with Daniel, who’s perhaps in a rougher place than we’ve ever seen him. If they’re in the same orbit again, that’s a clear sign the story is really starting to kick in as we enter the second half of the season. He even goes so far as to confess that it was the worst moment in his life. Not coincidentally, it also features the two best fight scenes so far, and it’s the first episode to feature the show’s best pairing: Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso.

There were plenty of big reveals in Cobra Kai season 5: Jessica Andrews (Robyn Lively) is related to Amanda LaRusso (Courtney Henggeler)! Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) ...

We've talked about Big Red and Little Red and what it must be like at the dinner table after the mall fight, after the school brawl, after the showdown at the laser tag place," he says with a laugh. Johnny ( [William Zabka](https://ew.com/person/william-zabka/)) is an Olive Garden superfan! The funny thing for us is in real life they are brothers and they were called the ginger twins like immediately. As they leave the Cobra Kai parking lot after the epic Terry Silver ( While some fans assumed that the duo (also known as the Ginger Twins) were related, it had never been explicitly stated in the show. There were plenty of big reveals in Cobra Kai season 5: Jessica Andrews (Robyn Lively) is related to Amanda LaRusso (Courtney Henggeler)!

Jessica Andrews, played by Robyn Lively, is the latest character from the 'Karate Kid' movies to make an appearance on 'Cobra Kai'.

In episode 5 of the new season, Jessica once again proves to be a centering influence on Daniel while he is spiralling, even if they aren't in the same room together. Jessica was a close friend of Daniel LaRusso while he was preparing for the All Valley under Terry Silver's tutelage during the events of The Karate Kid III. [Season 5](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a40869272/cobra-kai-season-5-teaser-mike-barnes-sean-kanan/), which just dropped on Netflix, also features a cameo appearance from a friendlier face: Jessica Andrews.

In another therapy session, Kreese cycled through repressed memories as he appeared to be speaking directly to his lost love Betsy, young Johnny, Terry Silver ...

Kreese came up in my relationship with my lady, and when I was making those scenes, I was pulling on the unhappiness I had with my relationship, and all of that — especially Betsy — was real to me. I’m dying to see the maturation of it. And so I was able to cry and all that because I was pulling on stuff that was happening to me in real life at that given moment. It’s going to be open season on Silver, and John Kreese will get his revenge. Is Kreese going to be out for revenge or is there any chance these three might end up on the same page one day? Johnny and Daniel wind up getting some info out of Kreese — that Silver’s plan involves the Sekai Taikai tournament — but they ultimately dupe him. This show is written with a lot of perception and they conceive everything a year and a half before the season even begins. When you create a backstory and you reread it and then the camera’s rolling, you know why and when and how these things affect you as a human being. Johnny violated that element of Cobra Kai, so Kreese at the end of Season 3 had to take over. Johnny violated the code of Cobra Kai, that mercy is for the weak, and Miguel showed mercy. Then after confronting his lingering anger and raw emotions, Kreese went back to his cell and finally let loose on his jail mates. But when he attempted to manipulate the prison system by “playing the good soldier,” his prison-assigned psychologist didn’t buy it, thwarting his hopes for a positive recommendation and early release.

After a brief cold open, the episode begins with a truly iconic scene featuring Daniel LaRusso and the three main antagonists from the Karate Kid franchise: ...

All of our favorites (Miguel, Robby, Tory, Sam, and eventually Devon and Stingray) are finally on the same team in a quest to vanquish their one true enemy: Cobra Kai. Their plan is to break into Cobra Kai (they’ve learned a lot from Johnny, right?) and post the video of Silver beating up Stingray to the dojo’s YouTube channel. This eventually leads to a violent showdown in which Chozen and Johnny are literally almost beaten to death by Silver and his wicked karate jerks (classic Cobra Kai), but they survive ( [Season 5 of Cobra Kai](https://decider.com/2022/09/09/cobra-kai-season-5-netflix-stingray-aew-chris-jericho-judas-fozzy/). The first one pitted the karate adults (a true dream team of Daniel, Johnny, Chozen, and Mike Barnes) against Terry Silver and his coterie of evil senseis, while the second karate brawl focused on the kids. We’ll have more on this historic encounter on Monday, but Johnny referring to Barnes as “the bad boy” is one of my favorite pop culture moments of 2022.

Will Chozen be Cobra Kai's Trojan Horse, or has he been swayed by Silver's manipulative nature? We recap Season 5 Episode 2 of Cobra Kai.

Chozen unwittingly revealed himself by making a toast that is traditional in Okinawa, and Silver offers a high price to the sensei who can take Chozen out. He unsheathes a blade with historical significance, revealing that his ultimate ambition is to go global with Cobra Kai and spread his influence worldwide. Hector demands to know who Miguel spoke to on the phone earlier in the day, but Miguel explains he was checking up on his mom. Chozen is determined to push Silver to his limit and expose his true colors. He relates a parable — similar to the story of Icarus — about getting your wings burned from getting too close to the light, but uses it to discuss his relationship with women. He discusses how their championship is a springboard to new heights and how he has brought in the finest senseis in the valley. Miguel is blown away, but is the boy in for a disappointment? Hector says the kid is a handful and this prompts Miguel to ask if he'd ever have more children. The senseis pair up with the class and Chozen selects Tory, asking if she is a champion. Tory needs to talk to Silver, though, and calls him out for paying off the referee in the All Valley Tournament. Robby and Johnny are walking the streets of Mexico, without wheels and in need of cash. They are approached by a Mexican man, and there is a lot of miscommunication resulting from a language barrier regarding The Eagle Fang Mobile between them.