The trailer for Cobra Kai teases a moment we have been eagerly waiting for, which was first set up 40 years ago in The Karate Kid. The final season of the Netflix series will wrap up Johnny Lawrence’s story, and presumably set up the continuation of the Miyagiverse into the upcoming 2025 Karate Kid movie. This means, of course, resolving some of the conflicts that have been ongoing ever since Johnny was in high school in the 1980s. All these years later, the top student of the titular Cobra Kai has a chance to settle the score.
Cobra Kai season 6 faced several delays, but it is finally on the way, with an officially trailer dropped in April 2024. The teaser revealed that this final installment in the Netflix series will be released in three parts, with the first handful of episodes releasing July 18, 2024, the next on November 28, 2024, and the last sometime in 2025. Along with this reveal, the Cobra Kai season 6 trailer included a few scenes that will presumably be part of the first few episodes, and these provided some hints about what we can expect.
Near the beginning of the Cobra Kai season 6 trailer, text flashes across the screen that says, “The end of a legacy deserves a grand finale.” This is accompanied by a clip of Daniel and Johnny’s match at the All-Valley Tournament in 1984’s The Karate Kid movie. Then, the following shot shows rivals, now 40 years older, bowing to one another as if preparing to fight.
This seems to indicate that Johnny and Daniel will finally get a true rematch in Cobra Kai season 6, which audiences have eagerly awaited. Of course, at this point in the story, the pair are no longer at one another’s throats. Though they are still highly competitive, they are more like friends than true rivals, so a big final battle won’t be nearly as aggressive as it was in The Karate Kid. Still, seeing Daniel and Johnny finally settle their differences several decades after their iconic battle is a perfect way to kick off Cobra Kai‘s final season.
Of course, this won’t be the first time that Daniel and Johnny will have sparred in Cobra Kai. They may get along pretty well by season 6, but earlier episodes told a different story. Both have instigated fights in the past and though they were fun to watch, each ended in a draw. In season 2, Daniel attacked Johnny at his apartment after discovering that Sam had spent the night there with Robby, but the fight was broken up before a resolution. The same was true for the garage fight in season 3, and the pair’s tournament-style match in Cobra Kai, season 4, ended with both being simultaneously KOed.
The fact that Cobra Kai has thus far not allowed either Johnny or Daniel to get a leg up on the other seems to indicate that a true rematch has been saved for the end, and it looks like season 6 is when this will finally pay off. There have been years of anticipation built up toward this moment between The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai, and it’s sure to be among the Netflix series’ more exciting matches. Of course, it’s currently unclear who would be the victor of this final epic battle.
As previously mentioned, all but Daniel and Johnney’s All-Valley match in The Karate Kid has ended in a draw, which indicates that the pair are pretty evenly matched in Cobra Kai. However, someone has to win in this final battle, and it’s pretty easy to guess who it will be. Since Daniel won in the 1984 movie, and Johnny is the main character of the spinoff series, it stands to reason that victory would this time be his. This would make the rivals even for the end of Cobra Kai, with each holding a single victory along with a spattering of draws.
The real question of Cobra Kai season 6 is how the series will make Johnny’s win interesting. Since the result itself is predictable, there must be an added factor that will allow the match to satisfy the heavy anticipation that has been so intentionally built up over the years. At the very least, this final rematch between Daniel and Johnny needs to be highly dramatic, full of the flair and style that Cobra Kai has become known for, allowing the moment to stand out as the perfect way to resolve Johnny’s 40-year-long story.