Netflix renewing Cobra Kai months before season 4 even premieres proves that the Karate Kid spinoff is the streamer’s most important show. Over the course of its relatively brief time creating original programming, Netflix has had a few shows become its standard-bearers at different points, including House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Stranger Things. But could Cobra Kai now be establishing itself as the latest king of Netflix?
To say that Cobra Kai's success on Netflix has been a surprise would be an understatement. After two seasons on YouTube Red, Cobra Kai was picked up by Netflix for a third season and became an online sensation nearly overnight. Netflix’s large and diverse customer base delivered Cobra Kai to a massive audience that may not have even been aware of its existence before, sparking a wave of excitement around the show before season 3 even aired. Fortunately for both Netflix and Cobra Kai, that excitement only grew when the new season arrived at the start of 2021, firmly establishing the series as one of the biggest of the year.
But is all that really enough to make Cobra Kai Netflix’s new dominant show? It’s a high bar, but one the Karate Kid series seems well equipped to meet. From its preestablished fanbase and multigenerational cast to its relatively low budget and potential for expansion, there are a lot of reasons why Netflix might view Cobra Kai as one of if not the most important original series currently streaming on the platform.
Cobra Kai Is Netflix’s Biggest Franchise
Over the past decade, Netflix has developed some pretty popular shows, some of which have expanded into or been derived from larger media franchises. The success of Bridgerton, for instance, has been aided by the popular appeal of Julia Quinn’s romance novels, and The Witcher franchise wouldn’t exist on Netflix if not for the popularity of the associated books and video games. However, Netflix has generally lacked franchises of the caliber of its competitors – longstanding media brands like Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. That is, until the acquisition of Cobra Kai.
The Karate Kid is not on the level of those other franchises, but it’s still a big pop-culture name with decades of history, a massive preexisting fan base, and lots of lore to pull from. The characters were already popular, the storyline was already a hit, and enough time had passed prior to the start of Cobra Kai that a Karate Kid series felt both novel and exciting. It was the perfect zeitgeist, and Netflix’s diverse user base made it a perfect platform for the show to quickly catch on. Again, is it as big as Star Wars? No. But with most of Netflix’s biggest series being either original stories or based on smaller or more recent associated media, The Karate Kid is still a huge get. And according to the streamer’s season 5 order, Netflix will be capitalizing on Cobra Kai’s franchise appeal as much as possible.
Cobra Kai’s Audience Spans Decades
Because of the longevity of the Karate Kid movie franchise, Cobra Kai’s fanbase spans multiple generations. Anyone who’s seen the original films over the decades has a reason to tune in to the show creating multiple points of entry for viewers. And because Cobra Kai is still a relatively autonomous story, it’s also perfect as the first point of entry into the franchise for those who haven’t seen any of the movies.
Cobra Kai capitalizes on that broad audience appeal by creating two distinct character groups – the grown-up versions of the original Karate Kid characters and their families/friends, and the new generation of teenagers learning karate from Daniel, Johnny and Kreese. That gives both older fans and younger Netflix viewers characters to root for and plotlines to get invested in. All that together gives Cobra Kai what’s quite possibly the biggest potential audience of any other Netflix original series. It covers so many demographics – all of which have responded well to the show – that it’s very nearly become a “one size fits all” story. That means more value added for Netflix every time there’s a new season, and hence, more incentive to invest in the show over other popular series that might have more narrow appeal.
Cobra Kai Is Perfect For Expansion
The creators of Cobra Kai have talked openly about the ambitions of creating a whole “Miyagi-Verse” of multiple Karate Kid spinoff shows, and at Netflix, Cobra Kai is ripe for that kind of expansion. As an ensemble show, there are lots of characters who could star in their own spinoffs; because a lot of those characters will graduate high school in the near future of the show’s story, they could wind up anywhere, in any number of other stories. The creators have even confirmed that The Next Karate Kid is in the same canon as Cobra Kai, meaning that characters from that film, like Hilary Swank’s Julie Pierce, could be brought into the fold going forward.
If Cobra Kai continues to hold the mass appeal it currently has, the possibilities for spinoffs and other forms of franchise expansion are nearly limitless. Miguel could be the singular star of his own show, for instance, after Cobra Kai ends, provided Xolo Maridueña doesn’t become too busy after the fame of starring in DC’s upcoming Blue Beetle film. Sam, Tory, Robby, Hawk, Johnny, Daniel, Kreese – they’re all popular with the Cobra Kai fan base in different ways, and any of them could be spun out into other shows or films if the opportunities arose. Of course, Netflix has plenty of other series that they’re currently working on expanding in other ways, like The Witcher and Bridgerton. But when combined with Cobra Kai’s multigenerational audience and longstanding franchise appeal, its own unique expansion opportunities are too promising for the streamer not to prioritize. It’s possible that the series could fade after its current moment in the spotlight, but all the evidence points in a different direction. Cobra Kai has been one of Netflix’s most popular shows for a while now, and it seems like it might also be turning into its most important.