Cobra Kai ★ Cast Then and Now | Before and After 2022

The transcript below is from the video “Cobra Kai ★ Cast Then and Now | Before and After 2021” by HEX.

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Thirty-four years after being defeated by Daniel LaRusso in the 1984 All-Valley Karate Tournament, Johnny Lawrence, now in his 50s, works as a part-time handyman and lives in an apartment in Reseda, Los Angeles, having fallen far from the wealthy lifestyle in Encino that had been enabled by his verbally abusive step-father, Sid Weinberg. He has a son named Robby with his former girlfriend Shannon Keene, but he abandoned them both when Robby was born as his mother Laura died shortly before Robby’s birth. Johnny, admittedly, has never recovered from his breakup with his high school girlfriend, Ali Mills.

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After losing his job, a down-and-out Johnny uses karate to defend his teenage neighbor Miguel Diaz from a gang of bullies. Miguel, an asthmatic kid who lives with his Ecuadorian single mother Carmen and grandmother Rosa, asks Johnny to teach him. Initially reluctant, Johnny finally agrees and decides to reopen the Cobra Kai karate dojo as a chance to recapture his past; however, this act reawakens his rivalry with Daniel LaRusso. Daniel, now the owner of a highly successful car dealership chain, is married to co-owner Amanda and has two children: Samantha and Anthony. Daniel is finally living the wealthy lifestyle he envied as a kid when he lived in Reseda. However, after his friend and mentor Mr. Miyagi died, Daniel’s struggle to meaningfully connect with his children has disrupted the balance in his life. Meanwhile, his mother Lucille, his other source of support, has a complicated relationship with Amanda.

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Johnny’s dojo attracts a group of bullied social outcasts, including Miguel’s newfound friends Aisha, Hawk, and initially Demetri, who find camaraderie and self-confidence under his tutelage, a marked contrast to the kind of students Tommy, Bobby, Dutch, Jimmy and Johnny were when training in the original Cobra Kai run by John Kreese. Johnny develops a bond with Miguel in a manner that resembles the relationship between Daniel and Mr. Miyagi. Cobra Kai’s philosophy, however, remains mostly unchanged, though Johnny tries to infuse it with more honor than Kreese did. Thus, Miguel develops into a very different kind of student than Daniel, or even Johnny, was; he also begins dating Samantha. Johnny’s efforts to reform Cobra Kai are threatened by the unexpected reappearance of Kreese, who aspires to bring the dojo back to its originally ruthless form.

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As a means of revenge against his estranged father, Robby convinces Amanda to hire him for a position at the LaRusso Auto dealership and develops a close friendship with Daniel, who is unaware of Robby’s parentage. He even studies Mr. Miyagi’s form of Karate with Daniel and befriends and eventually starts dating Samantha after her breakup with Miguel. She eventually joins her father’s dojo, along with Demetri and a few other Cobra Kai defects. Miguel later begins dating a new Cobra Kai student, Tory, who becomes Sam’s rival.

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After the violent aftermath of a school brawl that is fueled by the dojos and their rivalry, Miguel is accidentally crippled by Robby while Samantha is also hospitalized due to injuries from her fight with Tory. Johnny finds that Kreese has taken Cobra Kai from him, prompting him to form his own dojo Eagle Fang. Robby is expelled from school for crippling Miguel and eventually sent to juvenile detention, and while Kreese continues to lead his students down darker paths, Daniel returns to Okinawa to help find balance, where he reunites with former love interest Kumiko and reformed former enemy Chozen.

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Johnny helps Miguel regain the use of his legs with his unconventional training techniques, and there’s eventually a reunion between Ali, Johnny, and Daniel, where Ali finally puts their rivalry to rest. However, the rivalry between the three dojos eventually explodes as Cobra Kai fights Miyagi Do and Eagle Fang in a brutal brawl. Afterward, Johnny and Daniel face Kreese, who has successfully turned Robby against both Johnny and Daniel and over to Cobra Kai through manipulation. They all agree to settle the fate of the dojos and valley at the next All-Valley tournament. Throughout the third season, flashbacks are also shown to Kreese’s time in the Vietnam War, and how it led him to become the merciless and ruthless man he is in the present day.

The story’s development revolves around these primary relationships, which lead to conflicts that are ultimately the product of Daniel and Johnny’s inability to move away from the past.

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During the original Karate Kid shoot, late director John G. Avildsen shot hours of tournament footage from multiple angles. The crew behind Cobra Kai searched the studio vault and found a ton of never-before-seen clips, which they were able to introduce into the series via flashbacks. One of them includes Zabka’s real life mom, who was in the stands in different angles that went unseen until 2018. Ralph Macchio told Uproxx there are three brand new angles of the famous crane kick.

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In a behind the scenes featurette, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka state that even though most of the scenes they were in together in the original Karate Kid, they were either arguing or Macchio was “getting his ass kicked,” they were friendly and had a lot of fun on set.

In real life, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka became friends after the original Karate Kid film was completed and became a hit. Macchio said that they became even closer friends after Noriyuki “Pat” Morita (Mr. Miyagi) passed away in 2005. Ralph Macchio and William Zabka were also 80s teen heartthrobs, with Zabka usually being depicted as ‘the bad boy”.

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Johnny lives in the Reseda Heights apartments. This apartment complex and its location are made to resemble Daniel Larusso’s apartment complex in the original Karate Kid, complete with identical paint and coloring on the lettering. This also references the discrimination Daniel experienced in the first movie for being from Reseda instead of a richer part of LA like Johnny and Ali (Elizabeth Shue), and is meant to illustrate how low Johnny has descended since the original film.

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Xolo (Miguel) Maridueña revealed in an interview that before they filmed his character’s first kiss with Samantha (Mary Mouser) on screen, Mouser told him she prefers not to kiss someone for the first time on camera, and would rather get the “heebie-jeebies” out of the way by kissing each other off-screen before they start filming. He said he got really nervous and started popping breath mints. Then, as he leaned in to kiss her, Mouser whispered very timidly, “Xolo, I’m nervous, you are like a brother to me,” which really made it awkward for him.

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When Johnny Lawrence has Aisha making a recording of him for a commercial for the Cobra Kai dojo, he tells her to add the Cobra Kai logo at the end and to make it chrome so it really stands out, a reference to the Cobra Kai logo for the series that appears at the end of every episode.

Diora Baird played William Zabka’s wife in Hot Tub Time Machine (2010). In Cobra Kai she plays his ex and mother to his son Robby.

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The movie Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) is watching on TV in the first episode, is Iron Eagle (1986). Actor Rob Garrison, who played Tommy, a fellow Cobra Kai and Johnny’s friend in The Karate Kid, also appeared as Packer in the early scenes of Iron Eagle.

The creators of the show revealed that Cobra Kai was originally conceived as a feature film. They changed to an ongoing series to benefit of the longer times to tell a bigger story and differents points of view for the characters. This was revealed during the Netflix’s official YouTube Channel show “Reunited Apart”.

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Each season has at least one episode named after a song, one named as a Spanish word, and one named for a phrase or line from the original movie.

Sean Kanan has expressed his interest in reprising his role as Mike Barnes from The Karate Kid Part III (1989).

Daniel serves Bananarama Pancakes to his kids for breakfast . Bananarama’s song “Cruel Summer” appears in The Karate Kid (1984), in the scene where Daniel first rides his bike to school. The song was a hit in 1984 but never made the movie soundtrack. The song was later remixed and used as a cover in the season 2 finale.

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Throughout the series Johnny is constantly seen drinking Coors Banquet while Daniel is drinking more “upscale” drinks or “craft” and imported beers. Daniel makes light jokes about Johnny drinking “old man beer” while Johnny refers to Daniel’s drinks as “pussy” beer. This was done to show Johnny as a “Blue Collar” guy set in his ways while Daniel is able to adapt into the age of Social Media and political correctness. Daniel throughout the series is seen drinking Corona, Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Samuel Adams Summer Ale, and Blue Moon. Blue Moon is made by Coors ironically enough.

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Tanner Buchanan has the most martial arts training of the principal actors of all of 4 Karate Kid movies plus this series, with a purple belt in tae kwon do, about halfway to a black belt. However, if one were to include the 2010 reboot of the franchise, Jackie Chan would take this title as he has actually earned a black belt.

Originally set to be born December 18, 1968, the continuity timeline set up in The Karate Kid Part II and The Karate Kid Part III, actually placed Daniel’s birthday December 19, 1966, making him turn 18 years old the night before the All-Valley 18 & Under Karate Tournament, and be almost 52 years old by the start of Cobra Kai Season Three.

Season 4 of ‘Cobra Kai’ will be coming out this December in 2021!