Just when we thought he couldn't get more bad ass... he did.
And after seeing your comments on my previous Hawk video, I think it's safe to say that
we're all here happy and celebrating, especially after his phenomenal character arc in Season
4.
Hawk...
Eli... whatever you want to call him now, has achieved something that his peers and
senseis are sometimes still struggling to accomplish – finding the balance within
himself.
This is Why Hawk is STILL an AWESOME Character.
Let's talk about why his redemption arc is so satisfying, why he was able to beat Robby,
what the future holds for him, and more.
Goes without saying but don't check this video out if you haven't seen Season 4 yet, but
again you shouldn't be here anyway if you haven't seen it.
Before we get started, if you're not a part of the biggest Cobra Kai Discord server, you
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And lastly, I wanted to give a shoutout to Pascal Aka and Mayling Rock N' Roll for allowing
me to use their music in this video.
You guys may know Pascal already from my Terry Silver video for his wonderful interpretations,
and some of you may recognize Mayling from my Miguel vs Johnny simulation video.
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Let's do a recap of what we know about Hawk so far.
Since this is a continuation of my previous video, 'Why Hawk is an Awesome Character,'
I'm only going to recount the events relevant to his arc in Season 4.
Feel free to skip to the next chapter but be warned – you may miss important details
that are relevant later on in the video.
After the events of December 19th, Hawk is struggling to find his place in both Miyagi-Do
and Eagle Fang.
Despite a changed attitude, the students refuse to believe that he's changed his ways because
of previous actions as a lead member of Cobra Kai.
Taking inspiration from inside the dojo, Hawk brings the students together with his idea
of an Okinawan Sparring Deck.
After Johnny and Daniel learn to respect each other's philosophies, Daniel takes the Eagle
Fang students under their wing and teaches them the core aspects of Miyagi-Do.
Hawk catches Kenny during his field trip attempting to attack Nate and Bert, and prevents it from
taking place.
Realizing he's part of Cobra Kai, he warns the new Cobra to leave the dojo while he still
can, not knowing Hawk was formerly Cobra Kai material.
Kenny reports this incident to Robby, Kyler, and Tory, who realize they still have unfinished
business with this "Judas."
At the drive-in, attempting to avoid Bert and Nate, Kenny bumps into Hawk again, dropping
all of the food he grabbed for Cobra Kai.
Because of this, Robby assumes Hawk is trying to pick on Kenny and this leads to a heated
confrontation between the teams.
However, the fight is averted by tricking Cobra Kai to stand on the baseball diamond
when it's time for the sprinklers to wet the field.
During another day of school, Hawk rocks a new color and runs into Moon again who compliments
his hair, while admiring Demetri for getting together with Yasmine.
Demetri also tells Hawk that Moon broke up with Piper, piquing his interest.
Robby takes heed to Silver's advice about revenge, and presumably before going to watch
the fight between Daniel and Johnny, Hawk is at the tattoo parlor.
Cobra Kai corners him and despite his best efforts, he is held down and given a free
haircut.
Eli shows up to the fight at the last second and due to his confidence being shaken from
the loss of his mohawk, he becomes extremely embarrassed and distances himself from both
dojos.
Demetri visits Eli and tries to convince him to join Miyagi-Do, but Eli insists that he's
quit karate for good and got what he deserved.
Not giving up so easily, Demetri confides that it was him who convinced him to take
karate seriously, gaining confidence and growing stronger.
It doesn't matter what his name is, what he looks like, or whether he's #1 or #0, Eli
will always be his binary brother.
After sparring with Mr. LaRusso, Demetri is excited to see not only Eli joining Miyagi-Do
once again, but to be accepted by the team.
In a reversal of what happened previously, Eli admires and is happy for Demetri being
happy.
Nevertheless, Miyagi-Do continues to train for the All-Valley, with Eli doing as much
as he can to be caught up to speed.
Despite some bumpy moments in the Skills Division and the Qualifying Matches, Eli makes it to
the quarter finals with fellow Miyagi-Do students Sam and Demetri.
After some intimidation from previous bully Kyler, Moon gives Eli a last minute pep talk
about who he is and the confidence that made him who he is.
Thanks to this, Hawk rises to the surface within Eli and 3 stocks Kyler.
With Daniel's advice to focus on defense and to stay patient, Miguel is greeted by his
old friend and they begin the match on friendly terms.
However, before a point is scored, Miguel re-aggravates his back injury, pausing the
match for 30 minutes so he can recover.
Ultimately, Miguel backs out of the fight, advancing Eli to the finals against Robby.
As he preps for his match, Eli takes Daniel's advice about finding balance to focus on the
fight.
He also manages to switch styles and ties the score with Robby, resulting in the match
time limit to expire and go to sudden death.
Giving it all he's got, Hawk manages to catch Robby and wins his first All-Valley Championship.
Let's first talk about his symbolic redemption arc, and why it was so satisfying.
As many, myself included predicted at the end of Season 3, Hawk's Season 4 arc would
be focused on the uphill battle of mending the bridges he burned with both Miyagi-Do
and Eagle Fang.
To be fair, they had plenty of reasons to distrust Hawk.
He chugged the Cobra Kai kool-aid and it sent him down the wrong path.
He had attempted to jump Demitri, trashed the Miyagi dojo and stole the medal of honor,
jumped Nate and stole the Miyagi-Do fundraiser money, picked on Demetri and Chris, breaking
his binary brother's arm, showed no mercy to his former bullies, informed Kreese of
Johnny's new location to cause a confrontation, and assisted in Cobra Kai's invasion on the
LaRusso household.
And while Demetri forgave Hawk, it just realistically wasn't going to be so easy to mend things
with everyone else.
Out of all places, Hawk finds inspiration at Miyagi-Do, with his interest behind the
history of Mr. Miyagi's great grandfather teaching on the Okinawan waterfront.
One of the more interesting things about this episode is Hawk's shirt, on his sleeve, has
the words “peace movement,” foreshadowing what happens to his character near the end
of the season.
And although he was still on bad terms with both dojos and both senseis, Hawk used his
intelligence to realize that in some aspects, both LaRusso and Lawrence were right.
Talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.
He has to be the one to build a new bridge over the burned one, and as I mentioned in
my prior Easter Eggs video, it was a very cool example of symbolism that he leads the
renovation, given the fact that he previously led Cobra Kai to trash Miyagi-Do.
When Johnny starts to teach Eagle Fang how to defend (leading by example by blocking
their hits or striking them so they can defend), for the first time contrary to his previous
fighting style, Hawk fights more defensively.
And while Miguel was the only one to catch a fish (at least onscreen), Hawk starts to
take in more of the Miyagi-Do concepts, especially moving in a circle and learning to be patient.
Some of this pays off in his interaction with Kenny.
Notice that Hawk DEFENDED Bert and Nate – he never struck Kenny, just stopped the attack
from happening.
The only problem is that Hawk didn't see that Nate and Bert picked on Kenny first and were
the aggressors.
He just saw that striking first wasn't right and tried to defuse the situation to prove
his loyalty to Miyagi-Do.
Even when Kenny turned around and accidentally bumped into Hawk, he only commented on the
situation, advising Kenny to “watch his step” as he was still representing Cobra
Kai.
But because Robby didn't hear the full context of the situation of what words were exchanged
immediately when the food dropped (and neither did we), he assumed that Hawk was preparing
to attack.
Despite the mild aggression towards Kenny, this completely differs from Hawk's character
in prior seasons, mirroring Johnny's arc throughout the seasons of realizing that life isn't just
black and white.
Hawk also takes notes from Miguel's Miyagi-Do approach – there are times where a battle
can be won and conflict can be avoided without throwing a punch.
One of the most obvious symbolic changes of his character is the new hair color – purple,
a mix of both his prior hair colors, and as Moon notes, symbolizes enlightenment.
Even in the tattoo shop, Hawk fights more defensively, using the table to cut off his
attackers and counter attacking after being thrown strikes, but unfortunately, Kyler's
choke from behind, along with the numbers advantage, have him put down for the count.
When visited by Demetri, the remorse for his past actions, first seen in 'Let's Begin,'
is now even more apparent – the loss of relationship with Moon, betraying Miguel by
siding with Kreese, and of course breaking his binary brother's arm.
He realizes that the consequences of his actions have caught up with him.
But because of Demetri's forgiveness and the belief he has in his longtime friend, Eli
starts to slowly build his confidence back by coming back to Miyagi-Do and is now accepted
by the students, ultimately forgiven for his past actions.
At the tournament, Eli still has a bumpy road, as his confidence is not 100% back, with not
being able to break the last board during his demonstration and still taking some this
during his fights, compared to his previous time in Cobra Kai.
And contrary to their last face to face where Kyler was made to back down, Kyler now takes
advantage of this, trying to get into his head.
But the last person that he hasn't completely gotten closure from or made amends with – Moon,
finally gives him back the confidence that he used to have.
The confidence he had within himself all along and what attracted Moon in the first place
- it never was about the hair or the tattoo.
This allows the two personalities – Hawk and Eli, to co-exist and achieve the balance
he so desperately needed.
Another key moment and aspect of his redemption arc was fighting Robby once again.
Let's talk about why he was able to beat him.
Robby, by no means, is a pushover.
He was Miyagi-Do's top student, with being able to contend with Miguel on different occasions,
and was able to overpower Hawk during their mall fight.
Because he had been with Miyagi-Do so long, he was able to fuse this style with the new
teachings of Cobra Kai, and also teach the dojo everything he learned, so they could
trap their opponents and throw them off balance.
Like Hawk, Robby was able to use his anger and his hate to become a great fighter, whether
that was crippling Miguel Diaz, bringing the fight to Shawn Payne, being able to land a
hit on his father, or even to take out the entire Cobra Kai dojo.
But, this is one of the things that led to Robby's downfall – he didn't have balance.
As much as he thought he did during his time with Miyagi-Do, we know it landed him in juvie,
and it also cost him during his fight with Hawk.
When Robby realized that he was looking into a mirror with Kenny, this ironically threw
him off-balance, and allowed Eli to get back into the fight.
Eli also was able to fully utilize the concept of Miyagi-Do – being patient, letting the
opponent to come to him, moving in a circle, and countering when the time was right.
Robby also didn't train in Cobra Kai the same amount of time Hawk did.
And don't get me wrong - Robby adapted to offense fairly quickly, as we saw in Season
3.
But because Eli kept his cool and switched styles on Robby, the score was tied 1 – 1.
Hawk also studied under Kreese longer than both Robby and Miguel had, so he knew everything
there was about offense and what Cobra Kai would do to try to put him on defense.
However, there is one sensei that Robby never studied under, and was the key to this victory
– Johnny Lawrence.
Miguel and Hawk were the only ones to train with Johnny for a lengthy amount of time.
And although his time back under Johnny was short, clearly there were things that he still
remembered and used that was at the core of his karate.
He was able to use this style as a balance between both offense and defense, and in fact,
if you look back at Johnny and Daniel's fight this season, Eli uses the same take down on
Robby that Johnny uses to counter Daniel's attack after using the pressure points, thus
scoring the win.
And as I somewhat correctly predicted in my previous video, it wasn't the intimidation
that he used to hold his own against Robby, but his confidence.
As some of you guys had mentioned in the comments of my previous video on Hawk, he shares some
comparisons to other characters from the Karate Kid films.
Let's talk about these similarities.
Like all 3 of his prior senseis, Eli was bullied.
It wasn't until he turned io karate that he became more confident in who he is, just like
Johnny and Daniel.
His arc could be closer to Johnny's, as he became a lead Cobra Kai student and bully
under John Kreese.
Like Johnny, Hawk broke up with his girlfriend over the summer.
History repeats itself as Hawk treats Miyagi-Do as the enemy, going so far to beat up a friend
over a Yelp review on Cobra Kai.
Like both of his senseis, he goes on to lose battles with Miyagi-Do.
Hawk leads the Cobra Kais in Season 3 on dirt bikes, much how his former sensei did at the
time did back in the 80s.
One fight in particular is won for Cobra Kai, as because a LaRusso provoked the fight, they
end up cornering a Miyagi-Do and break his arm, though in 1984 the crippling was avoided
as Mr. Miyagi intervened.
Hawk even sports a similar black eye as Johnny did after a fight.
One of the key differences, as mentioned before, is that Hawk is able to embrace different
aspects of each philosophy and use them all, whereas Kreese, Johnny, and Daniel are all
stuck in their own way and thinking their way is the right way.
Like Daniel, Eli competes in his second All-Valley, makes it to the finals, and wins against a
Cobra Kai student, becoming champion.
Here are my final thoughts on Hawk, and what we can expect to see from him in Season 5.
Once again, his loyalty is his strongest asset.
To prove he had changed as a person, Hawk would go so far to intervene in fights to
prove that he didn't care about Cobra Kai.
At the end of the day, when Johnny and Daniel split up the dojos once more, he gave Miyagi-Do
a shot, as that's where his best friend was.
Even then, he still saw Miguel as a friend – the person who inspired him to try out
karate in the first place.
When they exchange words in the semi-final, Eli smiles and asks Miguel to not hold back,
and the attitude he previously once had when they sparred at Coyote Creek is gone.
The moment even comes full circle when a slightly different variation of “Worthy Opponent”
plays in this match, the name of the song that played when the two fought at Coyote
Creek.
It was his intelligence that paid off once again, as he was the one to ultimately bridge
the gap between Johnny and Daniel at the beginning of the season, and at the end of it.
Although it took some time to realize, Hawk's confidence was inside him all along, not in
the tattoo or the haircut.
Just like in Season 3, he has a psychological advantage over his opponents once again, not
because he needs to intimidate them, but because he doesn't fear them.
When Moon renewed this confidence within him, he easily defeated Kyler with minimal effort.
While Cobra Kai won the tournament this time, there is already conflict within that dojo.
First, Silver usurping Kreese and taking over the dojo will more than likely cause some
division with the students, especially with Tory who knows he cheated and is loyal to
Kreese.
Unless he is swayed once again, Robby has now left Cobra Kai, and Silver will have to
look for someone else to lead the dojo, as the best fighter has now been beaten.
Kyler would've been the only person to take Eli head on by bullying him, but that's no
longer going to happen thanks to what occurred in the tournament.
With Chozen coming into the picture, Hawk will be even deadlier than before, and will
more than likely be the one to lead the fight against Silver's students, as Miguel for the
time being is no longer in the picture.
Unless his confidence gets shaken again, he may be able to disprove Silver's lesson of
everyone having a weakness.
As I mentioned prior, with now mastering the defensive aspect of Miyagi-Do and being able
to discern when the right time is to attack, Hawk is more than likely the strongest male
fighter of any dojo currently.
I'm proud to see how far the new All-Valley Champion has come, and with newfound belief
within himself, I can't wait to see what's next.
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Let me know what you guys think down below – what was your favorite part of Hawk's
character arc?
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