Netflix's Cobra Kai gets a season 5 kicked into existence ahead of season 4 premiere

The streaming service strikes first, strikes hard, ensures at least one more year of soapy teen romance and sweeping the leg, Johnny

By Alex McLevy | August 27, 2021 | 7:35pm

TV News Netflix

Netflix's Cobra Kai gets a season 5 kicked into existence ahead of season 4 premiere

“Oh, shit, I think this means we have to get in at least one more kicking and punching fight.” William Zabka and Ralph Macchio Image: Netflix

Hope you’ve already got your tickets for the All Valley Karate Tournament, because it looks like there’s going to be at least one more big rematch coming up. Netflix announced today that its hit series Cobra Kai has been roundhouse kicked into a fifth season—before season four has even aired. (Or come close to airing, really; the next installment of the martial-arts dramedy isn’t set to air until December of this year.) For those keeping track, that makes a third excuse for YouTube to kick itself for letting go of a big ol’ success story, unless it wants the series’ army of teenage fighters to do the kicking, instead.

After the first season of the show proved to be an unexpectedly fun surprise, it was a disappointment to see it get taken to the mat with an over-reliance on straight-faced soap opera dramatics in season two. Happily, it bounded back up for round three, delivering enough broad comic chops to see it still standing for another year, and giving us enough karate puns to see this paragraph through to the crane-kicking end. Last season ended with the reintroduction of the villain from the third film, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith)—we don’t see him, but John Kreese (Martin Kove) makes a call to an old friend while looking at a photo of the pony-tailed douche—meaning the series isn’t about to let go of the self-referential mythology any time soon. Which is fine; that stuff tends to be pretty funny, by and large. But please, for the love of God, make Tory less of a cartoonish, mustache-twirling villain this season. And the next time a massive fight destroys a private residence, someone, please, call the cops.