Cobra Kai is a very popular spin off show that because of it’s success, must be punished, apparently. I hate Netflix.
Fans have quoted it for decades: “Sweep the leg!” “Get him a body bag!” “Wax on, wax off.” Now, more than 30 years after “The Karate Kid” crane kicked its way into pop culture history in 1984, the mythos has been reborn for the digital age.
Make that reborn again. After debuting on YouTube Premium in 2018, breakout spinoff “Cobra Kai” last year moved to Netflix, where the series, whose third season premiered on the platform New Year’s Day, received more attention than ever. (Season 3 was originally produced for YouTube before the company shifted its original programming strategy.)
Ralph Macchio still remembers the moment it sank in that he’d get to come back for more as Daniel LaRusso, the scrawny San Fernando Valley teen befriended by Noriyuki “Pat” Morita’s martial arts master, Mr. Miyagi. “[Producer] Jerry Weintraub put his arm around me at the end of a screening and said, ‘We’re gonna be making a couple of these,'” said Macchio, now 59.
The sleeper hit spawned sequels, including the Okinawa, Japan,-set “The Karate Kid Part II” in 1986 and “Part III” in 1989. A Saturday morning cartoon even reimagined Daniel and Mr. Miyagi as globe-trotting adventurers. But by the time a fourth film was made — 1994’s “The Next Karate Kid,” starring Hilary Swank — Macchio and onscreen rival William Zabka, as blond bully Johnny Lawrence, were looking to branch out.
