With the announcement that Thomas Ian Griffith is reprising his role as Terry Silver in Netflix’s Cobra Kai, it got me thinking about the former YouTube show. Just a quick backstory of information (and I mean quick), Terry Silver was the villain of Karate Kid 3. Remember in the first season of Cobra Kai when Daniel was trying to bar Johnny from the karate tournament? A big reason for Cobra Kai getting banned was due to Terry Silver – who Johnny didn’t know as he wasn’t around in the third Karate Kid.
Thomas Ian Griffith returns as Terry Silver in season 4 of #CobraKai pic.twitter.com/gJMtNxGISp
— Geek Vibes Nation (@GeekVibesNation) May 27, 2021
But, that isn’t the point. The point is – Cobra Kai is awesome. Really awesome. So awesome that I binged the first two seasons within two days and watched the third season within one day. Karate Kid has already been a staple in our pop culture, but who would ever think a show about these guys thirty years later would be so great. After all, whenever a studio tries to bring back an old franchise in order to capitalize on the popularity it had decades prior, it never works. However, Cobra Kai works – so well.
Why, though? I’ve heard many people, myself included; express that Cobra Kai is better than it has any right to be. I mean, we have Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence three decades after their rise in the first Karate Kid. I mean, do we really want to watch these guys fight against each other? Did we want a show that primarily centered around Johnny? A guy who was the villain for the first Karate Kid movie? I don’t think any of us think we needed it, but damn I’m happy it’s around.
I think what makes this work is that it doesn’t try to be anything else other than a small, contained story about an old rivalry. It’s about karate and that’s so badass. It’s a story that is incredibly fresh and new, while also planting touchstones to the old movies. Throughout every season, it goes back to various things that happened in the films before it, but it is its own thing. And I like how it wasn’t very glamorous in the beginning. I like how we saw Johnny years later, not doing too well. It was a different side to the character that we thought that we knew. And Daniel wasn’t looking too good in the beginning – coming off more like a pompous dick than the underdog we rooted for back in the day.
I also believe that it does as well as it does because everyone is so passionate and committed to telling this story. You can just tell in the acting and writing that everyone loves developing Cobra Kai. William Zabka and Ralph Macchio are really fantastic in playing characters that maybe are a little out of touch in modern-day. They all have great students, some of who have stories that are just as captivating as the adults in the show. And when the show brought Martin Kove back as John Kreese, things really started to kick off.
I cannot wait for season four of Cobra Kai – I hope you are as well. It’s definitely going to be awesome – I can feel it in my bones!
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A girl with too many fandoms to count.
