The Art Of Redemption In COBRA KAI

We can all agree that everyone makes mistakes. But the question of whether everyone can learn from those mistakes and be a better person is a tough one to answer. Of course, we want to believe that we, human beings, are capable of change and that even those who have fatal flaws are not past any kind of redemption. But more often than not, change is not an easy thing to do. It never is. It doesn’t follow a linear path, which means that without realizing it, we often slip back to our old bad habits and hurt someone in the process.

Cobra Kai, the Youtube-turned-Netflix The Karate Kid spinoff from co-creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, tries to explore this subject. And while doing so, it offers one of the most memorable villains in pop-culture, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) a chance at redemption.

A Man With A Tragic Past

Kicking off three decades after the event of the first Karate Kid movie, Cobra Kai sees Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), the hero of the original franchise, now living the good life. He has a successful car dealership business, a wife (Courtney Henggeler), a daughter (Mary Mouser), and a son (Griffin Santopietro) who love him, and, of course, a meaningful life lesson he’s gotten from his mentor, the iconic Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), that he always remembers every day. His former tormentor and forever arch-nemesis, Johnny, meanwhile, is down on his luck. He’s drunk, has no meaningful relationship, or even a job — a typical life of that guy who peaks on high school.

Cobra Kai never shies away from the fact that Johnny deserves all that. After all, he’s a prick and a bully. But by flipping the narrative to focus more on Johnny, at least in the first season, the show allows us to see him through a more empathetic lens. He’s not the one-dimensional villain we always thought of him, but rather a complicated man with a tragic past and an even more difficult present. It’s a smart way to make the story fresh and compelling, not just because we’re offered a different perspective of the original Karate Kid movie Creed-style, but because it shows us that everyone, even a man like Johnny, still has a chance to redeem themselves if they keep trying.

In the first episode of the show’s first season, we get a look into Johnny’s past life. He was verbally and emotionally abused by his wealthy step-father, who, instead of giving him the attention and love he desperately needs, chose to nurture him with money. And the hurt and anger that comes from it have led him to all the wrong choices in his life, including seeking a father figure in the problematic John Kreese (Martin Kove).

The toxic relationship between Kreese and Johnny was fully depicted in the first Karate Kid movie. And it’s a study on how a young man gets easily manipulated by grown-ups, and in the process is being turned into a bully with the “strike first, strike hard, no mercy” philosophy engraved in his mind. Cobra Kai then attempts to examine the reverberations of that abusive relationship in Johnny’s life, portraying how the wounds he had gotten from Kreese has affected the way he lives his life now more than the disappointment of losing the All Valley Tournament to Daniel has.

While this sounds like an incredibly bleak and tragic territory to explore, Cobra Kai is not exactly misery porn about a man who can’t let go of the pain from his past. The show is quite the opposite. It’s hopeful and nice-spirited. The core of the story, in fact, is about Johnny’s redemption; about his growth to become a better man. And in that regard, the show becomes a reminder to its audience that it’s never too late for everyone to change.

The Non-Linear Path Of Change

In Johnny’s case, his redemption begins when he decides to reopen his karate dojo, still under the name of Cobra Kai, to help a kid named Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) after he witnesses him being bullied by his high school friends. He then tries his best to not step into Kreese’s foot, turning this kid into a bully like he was back then. What he wants and hopes from Miguel is for him to be a young man who knows how to stand up for himself. The dynamic between Johnny and Miguel is where the show gets most of its poignant moments, and both Zabka and Maridueña really sell the chemistry between their characters.

But as mentioned above, change and redemption are not a linear path and definitely never easy. With Daniel breathing down his neck at every moment, and with no one really believing he’s capable of change, Johnny, too, stumbles a couple of times. And things get even worse when Kreese, still with the same toxic trait we’ve seen from him before, reenters Johnny’s life by promising him that he’s now changed man at the beginning of the second season, which, of course, isn’t true at all.

One would easily suspect that bringing Kreese back into Johnny’s life is only meant to complicate the story. And while that indeed is a part of it, the show brilliantly utilizes this old, toxic dynamic between the two men to instead show us how difficult it is for human beings to change to be a better person. This is what, in the end, makes the show, despite its overtly cheesy teen soap drama, such a compelling character piece. It never hides the fact that change doesn’t happen overnight. Even for someone with a big and sincere determination like Johnny himself, change is still not an easy thing to accomplish. But that’s just life, right? We fall, we get up, and we fall again. What’s important is that we never give up on trying to get up again no matter how hard it is.

Final Thought

Cobra Kai may look like a series leaning heavily on nostalgia and cheesy drama on the surface, but when you take a look at it more closely, you’ll realize that what the show offers is actually much more compelling: a real and humane portrayal of one’s journey to redemption. The show wants us to always remember that no matter how big our mistakes are in the past, we can still change and redeem ourselves if we keep trying. Life is beautiful when we never give up, and both Cobra Kai and Johnny show us that.

What do you think of Johnny’s journey throughout the three seasons of the show?

All three seasons of Cobra Kai are now streaming on Netflix.

Watch Cobra Kai