A trip back to the All-Valley Karate Tournament is only three months away and there are plenty of outstanding questions that need to be answered as we get ready for the debut of the fourth season of Cobra Kai.
Along with releasing a teaser trailer, Netflix announced that Season 4 would premiere on December 31, 2021. During the trailer, fans will see that both sets of karate students taught by rivals Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) have joined forces to take on the students led by original Cobra Kai sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove).
Johnny’s Eagle Fang students are still led by Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña), who spent the start of Season 3 in physical rehabilitation for the nasty fall he took at the end of Season 2. Johnny’s son Robby (Tanner Buchanan) is still fighting for the dark side with Kreese’s Cobra Kai.
During the trailer, it’s evident that Daniel and Johnny’s karate philosophies are different, so it’ll be interesting to see if their teaching styles will mesh as their students start training together for the big tournament. “Many of us used to be enemies, but rivalries don’t need to last forever,” Daniel says.
Daniel and Johnny aren’t the only ones teaming up. Sometime during the 10-episode new season, Kreese will say hello to an old war buddy, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), one of the antagonists in 1989’s The Karate Kid Part III. During that movie, a ponytailed Silver recruits a hotheaded karate student named Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan) to fight Daniel at the tournament (Daniel wins). Will “Karate’s Bad Boy,” as Barnes is referred to in the sequel, make a cameo, too?
Some fans are also wondering if main character Julie Pierce (Hilary Swank) from 1994’s The Next Karate Kid will show up during the new season. She was Mr. Miyagi’s (Pat Morita) student following Daniel’s trilogy. Fans who “still ride so hard” for the franchise, as Maridueña put it last year, will probably find it difficult not to binge the whole season on New Year’s Eve – no matter who ends up entering the dojo.