🤐SPOILER ALERT 🤐 This article contains major spoilers from the entirety of Cobra Kai Season 5.
We had a lot of questions heading into Season 5 of Cobra Kai, the important one being: Will the Cobra Kai crew defeat Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) once and for all, or will he take over the Valley with a fleet of soulless Cobra Kai dojos?
“It’s Daniel’s worst nightmare,” Cobra Kai co-creator Jon Hurwitz tells Tudum. “It was Terry’s dream in The Karate Kid Part III. And Daniel LaRusso is the one person who understands just how dangerous Terry Silver is.” So Daniel (Ralph Macchio) brings out the big guns, calling in Karate Kid Part II frenemy Chozen Toguchi and growing more and more obsessed with his game of cat and mouse with Silver.
In doing so, he pulls an ironic role reversal with erstwhile frenemy Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), who’s on a personal mission of his own, reforming connections with son Robby (Tanner Buchanan) and protege Miguel (Xolo Maridueña). When Daniel finally turns to Johnny for help, the pair have almost entirely swapped places.
“Daniel’s become completely obsessed with Cobra Kai, with karate in the Valley,” co-creator Josh Heald says. “And Johnny is kind of the grounded guy trying to look after his house, saying, ‘What the heck’s going on, what are you talking about?’ ” It’s a moment that paves the way for the pair to (maybe!) bury the hatchet at long last. “You don’t have that typical, ‘Are Daniel and Johnny going to fall apart?’ [moment] in Episodes 8 and 9 that we sometimes have,” Heald continues. “You actually see their bond getting back to where it was and getting a little bit stronger.”
But of course, everything builds to the final showdown. Daniel’s midseason confrontation with Silver ended in humiliation, and things heading into the final episode are not looking good. “It’s an uphill battle,” says Hurwitz. “It looks like Daniel’s beaten, but through having his support team — his students, his family and Johnny — all getting behind him over the course of the second half of the season, he’s emboldened and ready to take on Terry.”
So when the chips are down, Daniel finally pulls out an old trick. “We thought it was important that Daniel has this opportunity to finally, one-on-one face off against this longtime foe and pull out his legendary crane kick — Something that way back in The Karate Kid Part III, Terry Silver was making fun of,” says Hurwitz. “And [he] sort of used a combination of Terry’s teachings of the QuickSilver method, as well as the crane kick to do Terry in.” And so Daniel does, crane kicking him into next season — and hopefully, out of the Valley for good.
At long last, all is well — at least until classic Karate Kid baddie John Kreese (Martin Kove) fakes his death and escapes from prison. “A big battle just happened in our karate war,” co-creator Hayden Schlossberg says. “It may just be peace in the Valley. But there’s this one hanging [thread] that’s left there, which is the King Cobra who just escaped jail and has reason to have revenge on everybody.”
But that’s not the only thing in the air for a potential Season 6, because Season 5 also introduces a global karate tournament into the mix: the Sekai Taikai. “That takes things to a next level,” says Schlossberg. “So we have things to play with going into the future. But right now we just like the idea of ending Season 5 with this feeling of, like, we overcame our conqueror.”
One thing’s for sure: after spotlight roles for John Kreese and Terry Silver, there are plenty of other Karate Kid characters waiting for their Cobra Kai closeup. “Fans who have seen all these movies know that there’s some chess pieces we haven’t played with yet,” Schlossberg notes. “And we’re aware of those.” In other words: Hilary Swank, anyone?
