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Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 3 gives an emotional but satisfying end to the journey of an unlikely revival that developed its own beloved cast of characters. The Karate Kid sequel series and reboot will conclude with a final five episodes, premiering Thursday. While there is a new Karate Kid movie in the works, it won't be Cobra Kai, just as the show wasn't exactly the original three films.
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Season 6, Part 3 picks up after Kwon's (Brandon H. Lee) death in a chaotic brawl at the Sekai Taikai karate tournament. The death is mentioned several times, paying as much respect as possible to the trauma it causes without being a downer.
There is unfinished business to resolve with the tournament, but more importantly, the final episodes give the characters resolution. The way Part 3 concludes six years of conflicts is even more fulfilling than the fights, and the fights are awesome.
The ending includes a real emotional catharsis for Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), the bully of the first movie who became a sympathetic hero as an adult. They even let Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) be vulnerable after his outrageous Karate Kid III villainy was further intensified in Seasons 4 and 5 of the show.
Callbacks to the Karate Kid movies work because they come after the legacy characters like Johnny and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) have earned a triumphant moment. By doing the emotional work, they surpass the empty Easter eggs from the recent Ghostbusters and Star Wars movies.
The tournament fights also build to cathartic payoffs. Cobra Kai is still an underdog sports show, but keeping that formula sincere after six seasons is remarkable. Most movies can't pull that off in one film.
Many of the young Cobra Kai characters are now high school seniors and have been anticipating college for the past 10 episodes. This drives the point home that there are life events that signify the end of chapters, but it doesn't mean we'll never see these characters again.
The high school characters truly graduate into adulthood at the end of the show. By that point, they have endeared themselves enough to warrant a legacy sequel of their own when they're older.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
