Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 3 Gives The Legendary Dojo Yet Another Makeover

This article contains spoilers for "Cobra Kai" Season 6 Part 3.

"Cobra Kai" is many things. It is a fantastic sequel to the original "The Karate Kid," showing how the final match of the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament still haunts Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence 40 years later, as the latter tries to rebuild his life after decades of misfortune. It is also a great reboot of the franchise, with a new generation of kids with their own stories, rivalries, successes, and many a karate tournament.

Still, this is a legacy sequel, and like most legacy sequels, "Cobra Kai" is at least somewhat of a pseudo-remake of its source material, but with a few changes. Here, rather than Daniel convincing old Mr. Miyagi to come out of retirement and agreeing to train the kid to defend himself from bullies and fight in a tournament, Miguel Diaz convinces Johnny to come out of retirement and train the kid to defend himself from bullies and fight in a tournament while wearing a Cobra Kai gi — making Johnny the good guy Barney Stinson on "How I Met Your Mother" always knew he was.

Before we found out Cobra Kai was actually founded in Korea and the focus shifted to Eagle Fang and then Miyagi-Do, "Cobra Kai" was all about the legacy of the titular dojo and whether you can redeem something (or someone) when their reputation had been utterly tarnished and dragged through the mud. From the first episode, back when "Cobra Kai" was streaming on the now-defunct YouTube Red platform, we followed Johnny's journey of trying to redeem Cobra Kai and make it a respectable dojo that helped kids.

Though it's been a long and arduous road filled with setbacks — like John Kreese taking control of the dojo and turning it into a violent gang (or Terry Silver taking control of the dojo and ... turning it into a violent gang) — the final episodes of "Cobra Kai" finally give the legendary dojo a new makeover and allow it to turn over a new leaf.

The final episodes of "Cobra Kai" make two things very clear about the "Karate Kid" property. First, the second part of the final season confirmed that Terry Silver was the franchise's big bad. Now, the third part of Season 6 reaffirms that the story was always about the fight for Cobra Kai's soul. Johnny was forced to split from his old dojo and open Eagle Fang back in Season 3, and since then he's tried to get back the dojo he fought so hard to run and turn into a place people actually like.

But it wasn't just about Johnny literally getting the dojo (as in the physical mall space he rented out for it), but also cleaning up the dojo's reputation. Johnny had to fight his own Cobra Kai training at the time, slowly deprogramming himself from toxic traits, prejudice, and all-around '80s machismo. By the time of the final season of "Cobra Kai," Johnny had grown a lot. Moving to Netflix can change a guy, as can falling in love, reconnecting with your estranged son, letting bygones be bygones with your old high school rival, starting to work with him, blending your dojos, becoming friends with said rival, and learning to forgive your former mentor who betrayed you and have him blow himself up in a yacht to take down the big bad guy.

Speaking of which, before Kreese decides to officially "retire" (and before he blows himself and Silver up), he gives Johnny one last gift — Cobra Kai itself. With zero chance of defeating Silver's Iron Dragons at the Sekai Taikai, Johnny takes Miguel, his very first student, and the two lead Cobra Kai into a new era. It is rather exhilarating to see the show evolve from Daniel trying his best to sabotage Johnny and Cobra Kai to the two burying the hatchet to such a degree that the final episode shows not only Johnny and every single one of his former students all wearing the Cobra Kai gi, but even Daniel and Chozen Toguchi in matching sleeveless black gis.

This is what "Cobra Kai" has been building up to all along: the titular dojo not only coming back to the world stage, but also doing so forever changed. Johnny had to take control of the place he called home as a teen, lose it to his terrible senseis, and then team up with his former rival in order to learn balance before he could truly have Cobra Kai change from its violent, toxic past.

After proving to everyone that this is a different, stronger Johnny, one capable of using both defense and offense to win the Sekai Taikai for his dojo, he takes those same lessons to a new and improved Cobra Kai. The dojo has so many fans that there are lines of people waiting to sign up outside their mall space and Johnny has appointed Stingray himself to lead a weekend class for beginners in a second location. Silver's dreams of expanding Cobra Kai are coming true, but not nearly in the way he hoped for.

This is not a Cobra Kai for killers and star athletes. Instead, it is a dojo for everyone, for kids of all ages and all sizes. The old Cobra Kai mantra is still on the wall, but the meaning of Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy has changed. This is not about being a bully, but about not letting the world walk over you. Johnny recognizes that he did help turn a bunch of dorks into fighters, but he also fully recognizes that you need balance to succeed. The students now split their time between learning offense from Cobra Kai and then defense from Daniel and Miyagi-do. Granted, it is unclear whether they pay a single membership or what, but it is a whole new day for Cobra Kai. 

This is the culmination of six seasons' worth of growth for Johnny and Daniel alike. Both now realize that neither their upbringings nor their teachers were perfect, but it's become their job to take the good from those lessons and pass it on, hopefully helping their students to become better than them.

"Cobra Kai" is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.