It almost seems like the wait is finally over for Cobra Kai Season 3. We just had a new trailer drop
showing us a lot of exciting things in store, such as the return of Kumiko and Chozen, Miguel finally
awake and going through rehab with the help of Johnny, and Johnny and Daniel teaming up. Prior to
that at the end of October, we had the release of the Cobra Kai Video Game. It's a really fun game;
a lot better than I thought it was going to be, with the game taking a somewhat non-canon approach
to the story while paying homage to classic games such as Final Fight, Streets of Rage,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc.
When I re-watched the trailer, there were a few things that stuck out to me and it made me realize
some things about the Cobra Kai video game. And it got me thinking – what if the Cobra Kai video
game wasn’t actually a non-canon beat-em-up, but a major allusion to what’s to come in Season 3?
For those of you who haven’t played the game, there are major spoilers that I’ll be discussing,
so if you’d rather play the game first, feel free to stop here and then come back.
The game opens up in what seems to be at the end of Season 2 - Hawk and Demetri are in the
principal’s office arguing, and the principal wants to get to the bottom of why an all-out war
left many students injured and one in particular in critical condition. The game allows you to play
as either Cobra Kai – which includes Miguel, Johnny, Tory, and Hawk, or Miyagi-Do: Sam,
Daniel, Robby, and Demetri. Overall, the game on both sides is overall the same outside of
playing as the different sides. Cobra Kai focuses on offensive-fire based attacks,
while Miyagi-Do focuses on defensive-ice based attacks. A very nice reference to the Fire and
Ice episode title and the overall color scheme in Season 2, where typically Cobra Kai wears red and
Miyagi-Do wears blue. However, you have to play both sides of the game to get the true final boss,
and which brings us to the first point of the comparison - Kreese.
Throughout the game, both dojos blame each other for the different events going on around town,
where graffiti is being put up to diss a respective dojo, fliers are being
passed out on said dojo, and gangs are running rampant due to the orders of a “karate master”.
Johnny thinks it’s Daniel causing the problems while Daniel thinks Cobra Kai hasn’t changed.
After playing both sides, Kreese reveals himself to Johnny and Daniel as the one who caused an
all-out war to have both dojos destroy each other and leaving him the victor in having his Cobra Kai
run rampant in the valley, very similar to how Kreese swoops in to take ownership of Cobra Kai
at the end of Season 2. It could also be argued that throughout the entire Karate KidAanthology
including Cobra Kai, Kreese has always been the primary villain, so it makes sense that
he is the true final boss in the game, too. Not to mention, in the same way he manipulated many
people throughout the game, he manipulated a few key people in the series, namely Johnny,
Hawk and the remnants of Cobra Kai at the end of Season 2, and Armand Zarkarian,
Johnny’s landlord to gain control of the Cobra Kai Dojo. This also ties back to this speech in
the teaser - “Your enemies think that they are the heroes, and you are the villain. There is no good,
there is no bad, there is only strong and the weak.” Kreese is very effective at brainwashing
the people he trains, where it be the Cobra Kai of 1984, the Cobra Kai of 2018 and onward,
and the gangs in the game that he uses to cause an all-out war between the two dojos.
Granted you made this assumption already, there are a couple of other things that
stuck out to me involving Kreese in the new teaser. Namely, his revamped Cobra Kai
Dojo. We see that it has a new look expanded upon Johnny’s original design for his dojo.
Kreese has his old creeds on his wall such as “Fear Does Not Exist in this
Dojo,” & “Cobra Kai Never Dies, (as seen as Season 2), but the kicker here is weapons
and I guess what you could call “dividers” on the wall. Now you’re probably thinking “OK, big deal.”
Well, in the Cobra Kai video game, the Cobra Kai Dojo has a VERY similar look when you’re fighting
Kreese, along with Oni masks (which I’ll get to here in a second). Now we know Kreese used to be
in the army but throughout the entire franchise we’ve never seen him use those weapons. In fact,
in his original dojo he also had his weapons on display which could be referencing that.
It’s just very surprising how similar the two incarnations of the revamped dojos look.
Now back to the Oni Mask – this also ties to a theory I heard a while back before the newest
teaser dropped. If you guys remember, the earliest Season 3 teaser was released on September 1st,
4 days after Cobra Kai moved to Netflix earlier this year, where we had shots of Okinawa and you
hear Daniel saying “Miyagi taught me everything he knew, he wouldn’t keep secrets from me” then he
gets slammed to the mat and a weapon lands next to him, where a voice says “Are you sure about that?”
Until the newest teaser that just dropped, we didn’t have confirmation it was Chozen who was
saying this (but now we do), so one theory I heard from Cobra Kai Theory (awesome channel by the way,
you should definitely check them out) is that the big secret that Sato, Miyagi's childhood friend,
is the one who taught both Kreese and Terry Silver, which would make Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do
different but same. Now yes, Terry Silver said in Karate Kid III that he and Kreese
were taught by “Kim Sun-Yung” of South Korea, but that could’ve been part of his ruse,
as he was at Miyagi’s Dojo in the first place to inform Daniel and Miyagi that Kreese “had died.”
In Karate Kid II, when Daniel and Miyagi land in Okinawa, they see a poster where Sato has been
the trainer for US Army Soldiers at Cadina Air Base for the past 40 years. Karate Kid II takes
place at the end of 1984 and beginning of 1985, so that would still fit in the timeline where
we knew Kreese was in the army in Vietnam, along with Terry Silver in the early 70s,
as shown by the picture of him inside his dojo in Karate Kid I. Again, you’re thinking “OK, so what
does that have to do with the mask?” Well… why IS the Oni-Mask in the dojo? Oni Masks originated in
Japan based on the Japanese folklore of Oni, an evil being that roams the spirit world. Okinawa
shares a complicated relationship with Japan, and not to mention during the Vietnam War, Cadina Air
Base in Okinawa served as a major transport hub for the conflict. This ties the theory of Sato
teaching Kreese and Silver to be very likely, where maybe Sato introduced a younger Kreese to
the folklore of Oni long ago, and to remember his master, he has these masks in his dojo.
Now let’s move on to the next topic of what a lot of us are excited
about – Daniel and Johnny finally putting their differences aside and working together.
This was teased a few times throughout the series, near the end of Season 1 in the appropriately
titled episode Different but Same, Johnny and Daniel find out they have a lot more in common
than they realize – absent father figures in their lives, with that void being filled by men they
looked up to who taught them the ways of karate, having mothers who wanted the best for them,
and of course similar hobbies of music and cars, as noted during the test drive. In Season 2 in the
episode Pulpo, after trading jabs at each other’s dojo both indirectly and directly all summer,
Johnny and Daniel are forced to eat with their dates together at a table when the restaurant is
full. They eventually come to the realization that both of them want what’s best for their students,
and that they don’t have the same motives as their common enemy Kreese has,
who cares about nothing more war and proving that mercy is for the weak. At the end of the night,
they shake hands but unfortunately, after the cops show up to Moon's party where both the Cobra Kai
and Miyagi-Do students were partying along with other students, Robby takes Sam to Johnny's,
because Sam fears that her parents would freak out seeing her drunk. Daniel tracks down Samantha
and has a fight with Johnny, which is only put to an end when Sam and Robby intervene.
After the school brawl, Daniel and Johnny feel guilty for their actions and in the teaser,
Daniel admits that this was both of their fault, and offers a truce to team up.
One of the first moments we see in the teaser is that Daniel is confronting Kreese in his dojo,
and what could be called his main outfit throughout the series and video game, blue
dress shirt and slacks, where Kreese is in his gi. This moment is very reminiscent of the final
boss in the game where outside of Kreese wearing his gi, the moment plays out very similar when
Johnny and Daniel confront Kreese. Another moment we see in the teaser is that Johnny and Daniel are
looking for leads throughout town after agreeing to team up. This could be investigating something
Kreese possibly has up his sleeve, maybe how he was able to fund his takeover of Johnny's dojo.
We see them confronting what seems to be sketchy mechanics in either a garage or a chop shop.
How does this tie the game in? Well in the video game, there's a very similar area in
the LaRusso Auto level where you fight in the garage, and a common enemy of this level is a
mechanic. Granted, at first I thought he was just a generic-themed enemy in an appropriate level,
but after seeing the teaser, maybe the game was teasing the upcoming arc/fight that occurs in a
similar garage. After all, in the video game, Tom Cole was told by Kreese to trash LaRusso Auto,
steal inventory from the said dealership, and as long as he did what he was told,
would've been able to take over Daniel's dealership with Kreese's help. Perhaps we
could see something similar in Season 3, where Kreese has Tom Cole involved in moving parts and
cars from LaRusso Auto to Cole's, or having his garages involved in some shady dealings,
and this is what causes Daniel and Johnny to investigate, in a Tango-and-Cash sort of way.
Now let's move on the last topic, and what I consider to be the most interesting of the entire
teaser – Robby in juvy. This was a moment first shown in the second teaser on October 2nd, where
we see Robby in juvie being escorted by a guard as he's looking at someone or something off screen.
In the newest teaser, this is expanded upon - first showing us Robby being arrested and with
shorter hair; probably on the run after the school fight and the police finally catching up to him.
We then see Robby getting up from his table, probably during lunch, and confronted by 3 guys
who then beat him down and run off. We see Robby face down on the floor, and then after healing
from the fight, we see Robby being visited by Kreese in prison. Out of all these shots,
this guy is what sticks out to me, the leader of the trio who confronts Robby. Why?
Well, in the Cobra Kai video game, every boss and mini-boss is someone we've seen from the show,
whether it's somebody from Cobra Kai or Miyagi-Do depending on what side you're playing on,
let's say for example Hawk, Demetri, Robby, Miguel, to even characters who didn't even fight
at all in the series - Tom Cole, Sid, Armand, Yasmine, etc... except for ONE character. Shawn,
the mini-boss of the Shopping Mall and someone who's also prominently featured in both the
pre-level and post-level cut scenes related to Shopping Mall. This really puzzled me,
because it made me wonder why they made an original character that didn't exist in Season 1,
2, the entire anthology, etc, when they used nearly EVERY minor character from the series.
Hell, even the very first mini boss, Derek, was a pretty obscure character. He wasn't even given
a name in the show, just recognizable as the 3rd man that Cruz and Trey now have with Robby gone.
Then it hit me – what if Shawn's not obscure, but just hadn't been seen
in the series yet? First let's see a side-by-side comparison of these guys.
Granted, Cobra Kai's video game art style is hit and miss sometimes on the likeness,
but for the most part it's pretty spot on – even with Shawn here. It's a near identical match,
down to the facial structure and hairstyle. Let's also take a look at a lot of the dialogue related
to this boss fight – his intro scene says “Ain't going to juvy,” so we know despite how the voice
actor sounds, he's a teenager like the students of Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai, but also the keyword
here – juvy. In fact, it shows up again after you defeat Hawk or Demetri. Shawn shows up and
then the security guard arrives and says, “Not on my watch, troublemakers! It's juvy time.”
And where do we see this unnamed character until now?
In the juvenile detention center, confronting Robby in the newest teaser!
With how much detail this game overall has kept in from the series, even down to the music done
by the same guys who do the music for the show, it really blows my mind. If anything,
this all boils down to what the game really is – a taste of things to come in Season 3.
Let me know what you think down in the comments, whether you agree or disagree,
or some other tidbits you might have noticed in the teaser that maybe I missed.
Thanks for watching; I may have a couple more Cobra Kai videos planned for the future.
If you want to stay tuned and informed, please like, subscribe, and share it with your friends.
As always, stay beautiful, stay awesome, we'll catch you around next time.