Cobra Kai Season 6 Finally Breaks The Show’s One Big Rule
Contains spoilers for “Cobra Kai” Season 6, Part 1
The five episodes of “Cobra Kai” Season 6, Part 1 set the stage for an epic final showdown. They do plenty of heavy lifting when it comes to building the season’s central plot lines, solving old conflicts, and setting up new ones before the story moves to Barcelona’s Sekai Taikai tournament. As it happens, one of the season’s new storylines not only ties into the Sekai Taikai, but also profoundly shifts the way the show treats Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita).
Throughout its first five seasons, “Cobra Kai” consistently reveres Miyagi by portraying him as a wise and infallible figure. However, Season 6 starts suggesting that the old master may not have been a particularly upstanding citizen after all. Instead of continuing to deify Miyagi as an invincible sage, the season introduces a mysterious crate with items that indicate the old master may have had a criminal past. An old, blood-stained Sekai Taikai headband even seems to reveal that Miyagi once took part in the tournament, which would mean he wasn’t always the kind of nonviolent entity Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) reveres him as. What’s more, several characters imply that Miyagi’s high status in the “Cobra Kai” setting is being largely protected by Daniel, who has put his former mentor on a pedestal and refuses to see him as anything but perfect.
Previous seasons have already revealed that Miyagi-Do karate has far more dangerous techniques in its arsenal than Miyagi ever taught Daniel. Season 6’s new revelations suggest that he used them himself, and that Daniel and the audience might be about to learn even more shocking things about the most prominent posthumous character on “Cobra Kai.”
The Karate Kid movies make clear that Miyagi is just a human being
Columbia Pictures
Like “Cobra Kai,” “The Karate Kid” films present Mr. Miyagi as a great martial artist and a pretty cool guy. Unlike the first five seasons of “Cobra Kai,” they also take some pains to point out that he’s a nuanced person who’s far from the one-dimensional old master archetype.
Miyagi is a highly unconventional sensei with a quiet sense of humor, and he likes to test his students’ resolve with seemingly mundane tasks. He can get genuinely annoyed when someone beats him at something, such as when Daniel catches a fly with chopsticks before him. He’s also not above humiliating those he deems unworthy. John Kreese (Martin Kove) finds this out the hard way in “The Karate Kid Part II” when Miyagi beats him with a couple of dodges and a nose honk. Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) gets a similar treatment in “Part III” when Miyagi returns his childish taunts after thoroughly dominating him in a fight. One scene in “The Karate Kid” that arguably goes too far even shows Miyagi karate-chopping beer bottles to intimidate a pair of racists after politeness fails.
Mr. Miyagi’s mysterious backstory unfolds bit by bit over the course of the movies, and his personality and tragic history are on full display in moments like the drinking scene in “The Karate Kid.” However, it’s worth remembering that the franchise never even implies that Miyagi could be a bad man before “Cobra Kai” Season 6, Part 1 introduces the idea. As such, Parts 2 and 3 will likely cast a more benevolent light on the teases about his shady past … but for now, it’s refreshing to see the show treat Miyagi as a human being for once.