The Karate Kidfirst premiered way back in 1984. While many have largely forgotten about the details of the film and the characters, the launch ofCobra Kaibrought everything right back into focus. Set in the present day,Cobra Kaifocuses on a new group of karate students. But it’s also about the reunion between Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) andJohnny Lawrence (William Zabka), bitter high school and karate rivals.
WhileThe Karate Kidalways painted Johnny as the bully and Daniel as the victim,Cobra Kaiflips the script and shows another side of the equation. Johnny had a tough life. He had a tyrant for a sensei when he was a teenager. And the result of the All-Valley Tournament changed the trajectory of his life for the worse. In the last batch of episodes forCobra Kai’s final season, there’s finally closure for one of the most heart-wrenching moments of the movie, and it will bring tears to fans’ eyes.
What Happens to Johnny in ‘The Karate Kid’
Johnny is the star student at the Cobra Kai dojo, but his sensei, John Kreese (Martin Kove), rides him hard. He is set on winning at any cost. This leads him to encourage Johnny’s bullying behavior. He recognizes that Johnny is a troubled kid with a mean stepfather who islooking for a father figureand Kreese capitalizes on that. When Johnny meets a new kid in school who his girlfriend seems to take a liking to, he immediately hates Daniel.To help defend himself, Daniel starts training in karate, making Johnny despise him even more.
It all culminates in the big All-Valley tournament, where the two young men end up competing against one another.In the final fight, Johnny literally hits below the belt when he listens to Kreese’s advice and “sweeps the leg,” referencing his intentional hit to Daniel’s leg that he knows is already injured. But Daniel doesn’t back down. He delivers that iconic crane kick and, whether legal or illegal, he is deemed the winner of the tournament. Johnny congratulates him even though he’s embarrassed by not winning. He seems to be a good guy deep down, but something, or rather someone, is preventing him from acting as such.
Given how neglected Johnny felt at home, however, and the way he was treated by his stepfather, it makes sense that he would do whatever Kreese wanted to him to do. He was desperate to make him happy. And he was just a vulnerable kid. The most awful scene in the movie comes at the end.In the parking lot, Kreese screams at Johnny for losing, calling him a loser. He takes his second-place award and breaks it, tossing it to the ground.He then starts to choke Johnny until Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) steps in and helps Johnny by taking Kreese down.
From there, the movie ends. WhileThe Karate Kidreturns fora second and third movie, and Kreese returns with his same villainous behavior, these films focus on Daniel and new villains, like Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) and Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto), both of whom reprise their roles inCobra Kaias well. Johnny is largely forgotten. But based on the story inCobra Kai,that one moment sent Johnny on a tailspin. He quit karate and his life went downhill from there. He was told he was a loser and he believed it.
When fans pick back up with Johnny inCobra Kai, he is working dead-end jobs and living in a low-rent complex. He is divorced and has a son that he has lost all contact with. He has no friends, drinks heavily, and is simply getting by, one day at a time.
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Kreese Has a Rude Awakening
As fans of the show know, the second batch of episodes for Season 6 ended in tragedy whenthe show got surprisingly dark. After finding Kreese’s knife, Kwon (Brandon H. Lee) grabbed it and intended to harm Axel (Patrick Luwis) during the massive fight that broke out at the Sekai Taikai Tournament. But when Kwon is blocked, he falls to the ground right onto the knife, which plunges through his chest. He is killed instantly.
When Season 6 picks up, Kreese is feeling the weight of guilt for this event. He blames himself since it was his knife. He feels guilty about so many things, and it’s all coming into focus. He recalls that Johnny came to his defense against Silver in a fight that was taking place in the back room at the same time. He considers how he treated Tory (Peyton List) as his personal weapon andfeels repentant, arguably for the first time in his life.
After sending Yoon (Daniel Kim) home when he recognizes that Master Kim (C.S. Lee) is teaching this new generation of kids to be lethal and unfeeling, he says his goodbyes to Kim (Alicia Hannah-Kim).He then begins to make amends. This starts with signing Cobra Kai up for the revived tournament for the sole purpose of allowing Tory to compete. He apologizes to her, and this time, it seems genuine.
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The Major Moment of Resolution
But it’s his conversation with Johnny that has fans shook.He approaches Johnny in a parking lot to apologize for everything he had done to him in the past. Johnny shrugs him off, not wanting to hear any of it. Knowing Kreese, Johnny also likely doesn’t take the apology seriously, thinking there’s an ulterior motive. But later at the tournament, when Johnny spots Kreese looking despondent, he recognizes that this time, it’s different. He approaches him in the hallway and finally unloads 30 years of trauma.As fans see flashbacks of the events fromThe Karate Kid, Johnny tells Kreese how badly he hurt him. He tells him how much he looked up to him, wanted to be just like him and get his approval.
He tells him how horribly that night affected him. He lost his entire sense of self, his confidence, his desire to fight in every sense of the word. And that feeling followed Johnny through his entire life since. When Kreese returned, it was clear he still had a hold on Johnny, and tried to manipulate more kids in the same way he did Johnny so long ago.
SeeingKreese in a vulnerable, apologetic stateis something fans have never seen in any of the movies or previous seasons ofCobra Kai. But he literally has tears coming from his eyes as he feels the pain and the guilt he caused.He has waited 30 years for this moment, but only now is he ready to accept it and understand the fact that he deserves it. Seeing Johnny’s passionately angry and tearful reply suggests that he needed this moment more than ever.
When Kreese puts his hand out to hug Johnny and he pulls away, it’s as if he’s a teenager again and feeling all the same hurt.When they finally embrace, it’s like a collective sigh of relieffor fans who have been waiting decades for this very moment and never thought it would come.
Kreese gets some final moments of redemption when he does whatever he can to make up to Johnny for the hurt he caused. Johnny asks him to allow Miguel (Xolo Mariduena) to compete with Tory as Cobra Kai in the Sekai-Taikai Tournament. Since Miyagi-do is out, it’s the only way that Miguel can get his final chance. Johnny was a former Cobra Kai sensei and Miguel a student, so technically, it’s allowed.
After Miguel defeats Axel, the overall score is still tied, which takes the tournament to a place it has never been before. Per the rulebook, if the tournament ends in a tie, a final fight between the dojos senseis must determine the winner. This means Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan), one ofthe show’s worst villains, must fight Johnny. Doing what he does best, Silver plots to find a way to steer Johnny off his game. He is ready to hit below the belt when he asks his henchman to approach Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) and the baby, which will undoubtedly send Johnny into a tailspin. There is no way he will fight if he thinks his wife-to-be and daughter are in trouble.
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But the man comes rolling back down the stairs of the boat, dead. When Silver heads up, he finds Kreese smoking a cigar as the twocharacters returning fromThe Karate Kidmoviesreunite. Kreese knows all his moves, and suspected that Silver would be up to something. He is not going to let it happen. He has done enough damage to Johnny.The pair fight and Kreese manages to toss his lit cigarette into a spill of gasoline, leading the boat to immediately burst into flames, killing them both.
It’s a sad end for Kreese but one that has given him a redemption arc that is 30+ years in the making. He may never have been able to make up for what he did to Johnny, both in the past and present when he returned. Butat least Kreese was moving in the right direction before he died. That’s more than Johnny could ever have hoped for and gives fans positive closure for a long-despised villain. While there’s no closure with Johnny learning that Kreese (and Silver) are dead, at least on screen, it doesn’t necessarily matter. The door to that part of his life is closed. And it has opened up a world of possibilities for him while Kreese can finally rest in peace, arguably for the first time in a long time.
