‘Cobra Kai’ Season 4 Just Marked Huge Milestone

Cobra Kai Season 4 is coming closer, co-creator Jon Hurwitz says. On Friday, April 30, Hurtwitz tweeted that the next installment of the martial arts melodrama has wrapped up filming. While an official release date has not yet been released, Netflix has it slated for some time in quarter 4 of 2021.

Co-creator Josh Heald confirmed the news as well, tweeting: “I’ve been riding a pendulum from exhausted to exhilarated (and back again) for the past four months. It feels tremendous to wrap [Cobra Kai] Season 4 production. But it feels even better knowing that we conquered our most ambitious season yet. This one… well just you wait.” Cobra Kai Season 4 will be the series’ second as a Netflix original series rather than a YouTube Premium original series.

It will also pick up after a brutal cliffhanger at the end of Season 3. The series was framed as a competition of midlife crises between Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), but John Kreese (Martin Kove) has slowly been rising to prominence as the true antagonist. Season 3 ended with Daniel and Johnny finally joining forces against him.

In the eventful third season, Johnny found himself ousted from the dojo he himself had revived, nearly giving up on his newfound love of being a sensei. However, he soon rebounded with martial arts lessons in the park under the new name “Eagle Fang Karate.” When Sam (Mary Mouser) and Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) rekindled their romance, they also helped forge an alliance between Eagle Fang and Miyagi Do, which Daniel and Johnny apparently intend to honor.

They both hope to end the violence among their students and return to teaching martial arts for self-improvement rather than for competition or violence. However, to do so their best option is to defeat Kreese and his Cobra Kai students at the All-Valley Karate Tournament. Kreese promised to leave town and abandon Cobra Kai of they could do so, and since they were unable to oust him by more conventional means, they are taking their training seriously.

Season 4 will also pick up the plotline of Johnny and Carmen’s budding romance, Miguel and Sam’s renewed one and the alienation of Robby from both Johnny and Daniel. There are hints that more characters from the original Karate Kid movies may be returning as well, but so far, none have been confirmed. The first three seasons of Cobra Kai are streaming now on Netflix. The fourth season is expected to premiere sometime in Q4 of 2021.