Octopi, tigers, and Stingray,
oh my! Here's what you might've missed in the newest season of Cobra Kai.
At the beginning of "Cobra Kai" Season 5, Daniel LaRusso makes a difficult decision and closes down
his Miyagi-Do dojo, a condition of the bet he lost to Terry Silver in Season 4. His students
are understandably bummed out, and Demetri in particular has one interesting throwaway line.
"Great, guess I'm getting a summer job."
It's an easy line to miss, but it foreshadows a funny scene later on in the season.
After returning from Mexico, Johnny decides to get a new phone so that he can properly join the gig
economy. He gets a knock on the door from the tech guy who's supposed to help him set it up,
and of course, it's none other than Demetri. This might seem like it comes from out of nowhere if
you missed Demetri's earlier line about getting a job, but if you caught that detail, it makes a
lot of sense. Working the fictional equivalent of the Geek Squad desk is perfect for Demetri,
and the scene gives him a fun excuse to butt heads with Johnny again, just like in the good ol' days.
One of the big running gags in "Cobra Kai" is that Johnny Lawrence just doesn't understand
modern technology. In the past, he's struggled to understand Facebook,
Google, and laptops, among other things. That confusion carries on into Season 5.
He calls Google "Goggle" in an exchange with Daniel. He plugs every existential question
he encounters into the internet. He achieves the worst-reviewed Uber profile ever in record time.
But one particular scene calls back to Season 2 in an especially fun way. While delivering
food orders around town, Johnny drops a box of taquitos off to the owner of a local pawn shop,
a character who fans of the show will surely recognize. In Season 2,
the same guy sells Johnny his first computer and subsequently has to help him figure out the basics
of how it works. The pawn shop proprietor plays the same role in Season 5 by helping
Johnny fix an issue with his new smartphone. It appears that some things never change.
Still, Johnny manages to effectively apply his tech at a few points in Season
5. Not only does his phone help him find employment, but he uses the treasure trove
of knowledge on the internet to prepare for the coming baby and to try to help
Robby and Miguel reconcile. Not all of these plans work out, but it's nice to see him try.
Miguel and Sam have a bit of a rollercoaster arc in "Cobra Kai" Season 5. Sam gets upset
when Miguel leaves for Mexico without saying anything, and when he gets back,
he tries to make it up to her. He goes jewelry shopping in hopes of finding a gift,
and he settles on a peculiar piece — a necklace with a pendant in the shape of an octopus.
There's no flashback scene or added explanation to give context, but fans of the show should
recognize the significance of the necklace to Miguel and Sam's relationship. During their
first date in "Cobra Kai" Season 1, Miguel wins a giant stuffed octopus and presents it to Sam
jokingly as a gift. It becomes a symbol of their relationship moving forward, so it makes sense
that Miguel would choose an octopus necklace, and it hurts to see him throw it away. Fortunately,
Sam stumbles upon it later on, and the two get back together by the end of the season.
There are a lot of capable karate practitioners in "Cobra Kai." In a show where fierce fighters
who cover a range of ages and styles throw down in almost every episode, you'd think it would
be easy to tell how everyone stacks up against each other. But "Cobra Kai" does a good job of
keeping things even. Sam beats Tory, but with help from her friends. Then Tory beats Sam,
but with a dirty ref. Nearly every fight in the show hints toward a clear way that the
loser could have won, perpetuating debates about who's the strongest.
One of the biggest debates centers on whether Miguel, Robby, or Hawk is the strongest of
the main teenage boy characters. They each get moments in the spotlight, and they've faced off
against each other many times. But in a subtle way, Season 5 seems to confirm that Miguel is
the best fighter of the three. At Johnny's urging, Miguel and Robby hash out their beef
in a no-holds-barred battle midway through the season, which ends in a mirror of their Season
2 school duel. It's clear that Miguel has Robby on the ropes, even after they both give it their all.
Later, in the season finale, Miguel goes toe to toe with Kenny,
who defeated Hawk several episodes prior, and seems to get the best of him as well. In short,
Miguel's not the one you want to mess with.
Every main character gets some time for growth and development in "Cobra Kai" Season 5,
including Amanda LaRusso. In Episode 5, she takes a well-deserved break from her
husband's crazy karate drama to reconnect with family, specifically her cousin Jessica Andrews,
who devoted fans will recognize from "The Karate Kid Part III."
If you're not intimately familiar with all the movies, this connection might tornado
kick right over your head. But Jessica doesn't just provide an unexpected cameo,
she also explains the significance of Terry Silver. While catching up at a local bar,
the two women discuss how Jessica and Daniel were tormented by the evil Sensei in the past.
"Terry Silver is back?" "You know Terry Silver?"
As far as how Daniel and Amanda met… Apparently, Jessica moved back to Ohio
after the events of "The Karate Kid Part III," but she and Daniel clearly remained friends,
which ultimately led to Amanda's introduction to the Miyagi-Do owner.
While a small detail, this is a fun inclusion because it finally connects Amanda to the larger
"Karate Kid" timeline. It also gives Jessica, a character who doesn't get to do much in the
original film, a slightly more important role in the franchise than she previously held.
When the Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang students come to Stingray for help at the end of "Cobra Kai"
Season 5, he's wearing an interesting t-shirt. If you've played the original "The Legend of
Zelda" or are simply familiar with the memes, you'll probably recognize the phrase "It's
dangerous to go alone, take this" printed on the shirt. The line is spoken by the NPC who
gives Link his sword in the NES game, and it's become iconic in the decades since.
This choice of clothing can be interpreted simply as a good choice for D&D night,
which is what Stingray is up to at the time. However, there's a decent bit of thematic depth
that we can read into the shirt. On one level, the line is an echo of the resounding Season 5 message
that doing hard things alone is rarely a good idea. Be it Johnny and Daniel or Tory and Sam,
the season makes a point of showing that "going alone" is usually a mistake. This is
especially relevant for Stingray, who cuts himself off from his former friends out of
fear and only speaks out against Terry Silver after being bolstered by them.
The shirt can also be read as a foreshadowing of the sword fight that takes place between
Chozen and Silver in the "Cobra Kai" Season 5 finale,
a tease that Chozen's habit of bringing his sai everywhere with him is a smart idea.
Though the duel between Daniel and Terry Silver is the proper final battle of "Cobra Kai" Season 5,
the real action climax is the sword fight between Silver and Chozen. No
prior battle in the show can match it in terms of absurdity or stakes,
and if you were watching the whole season closely, you might have seen it coming.
Early in Season 5, when Chozen is still undercover as a sensei at the main Cobra Kai dojo,
he's invited by Silver for dinner at his house. While he's there, the villain shows him his
impressive collection of swords, including one that he later uses to nearly fight Chozen to
the death. This is about as true an example of "Chekhov's gun" as you can possibly get,
save for the fact that it's a sword instead of a gun. The narrative principle associated with
playwright Anton Chekhov asserts that a gun seen hanging over a fireplace in the first
act of a play must be fired in the third act. In "Cobra Kai," Silver's swords are literally
presented as display pieces, exactly as a gun would be if hung over a fireplace.
This clever use of the old trope foreshadows Chozen and Silver's
eventual duel, and it makes it all the more satisfying when it finally happens.
"Cobra Kai" Season 5 does a fair bit of foreshadowing, including one musical allusion
at the end of Episode 9. Chozen, Daniel, and Johnny get back in their rented party limo to head
to another bar, leading to a drunken singalong to the Survivor's iconic '80s hit "Eye of the Tiger."
On a purely surface level, this song is almost too appropriate. As the Oscar-nominated theme
song of "Rocky III," it fits perfectly for the three sensei, all of whom have been on
journeys of self-discovery throughout the show. In other words, they haven't lost their grip on
the dreams of the past, and they've certainly risen up to the challenge of their rivals.
However, there's a second level of meaning to the song choice that foreshadows the
events of episodes nine and ten. Survivor vocalist David Bickler sings the lyrics,
"The last known survivor stalks his prey in the night,
and he's watching us all with the eye of the tiger."
These lyrics play just as it's revealed that the limo has been hijacked by an unseen, presumably
malicious force. Then toward the beginning of episode ten we see shots of Terry Silver acting
villainous. The song's lyrics are clearly meant to imply that the Big Bad is the one "stalking"
our heroes. Given Johnny's outspoken obsession with "Rocky," the whole sequence is spot-on.
In the final battle between Daniel and Terry Silver at the end of "Cobra Kai" Season 5, Silver
taunts his opponent by saying that Miyagi-Do will soon be extinct. Daniel isn't fazed by this.
"The roots are strong, so the tree will survive."
While not quite the original phrasing, the sentiment of Daniel's statement echoes Mr.
Miyagi's own words of encouragement from "The Karate Kid Part III."
In the movie, Daniel is led down a dark path by Silver's manipulative schemes,
but he eventually realizes the error in his ways. Feeling weak and broken, he returns to Mr. Miyagi
with a mountain of guilt at all that he's done, but his mentor doesn't allow him to wallow in
shame. Instead, he shows him the special bonsai tree broken by Mike Barnes earlier in the film,
which Mr. Miyagi has repotted and helped to flourish. Daniel is astonished that
the tree is doing so well. That's when Daniel's mentor says his iconic line.
"Make it because have strong root. Just like you, Daniel-san."
By invoking this bit of wisdom from his old teacher,
Daniel isn't just calling to mind Mr. Miyagi's training. He's specifically
conjuring the feelings that allowed him to defeat Silver's schemes as a kid,
so that he can defeat him once again, as an adult. And clearly, his strategy works.
"Cobra Kai" has always been a show that enjoys narrative parallels, but Season 5
takes things to a whole other level. There are some obvious cases, like how Miguel and Robby's
rivalry-turned-friendship acts as a sped-up version of Johnny and Daniel's arc, or how there
are a half-dozen mentor-protege relationships that mirror each other across the cast. Season
5 adds additional parallelism, however, in the form of its many reformed villains.
By bringing Johnny, Chozen, and Mike Barnes together, "Cobra Kai" makes a team of Daniel's
three main rivals from the original film trilogy. And while some get more screen time than others,
their journeys parallel each other, and Daniel's, in several ways. Like Johnny,
Chozen wallowed in self-loathing for years, albeit with a bit more remorse. And like Daniel,
Mike found solace in the joys of being a small business owner.
Additionally, Season 5 adds layers to the show's existing family parallels. Johnny and
Miguel's relationship continues to mirror Mr. Miyagi and Daniel's surrogate father-son bond,
especially after Miguel sees what kind of man his biological father really is. And
Tory gets to skip the years of anguish felt by the "Karate Kid" movie villains by admitting her
mistakes to Sam and seeking peace. There's a lot of silliness in "Cobra Kai" Season 5,
but there's also a lot of intentionality in the writing, and it's fun to see how the huge web
of characters is all woven together.