Warning: Spoilers for Cobra Kai Season 4 Below
The three competing karate schools of Netflix's Cobra Kai might unite into one school in the upcoming Cobra Kai season 5. Cobra Kai season 4 debuted on Netflix on December 31, 2021, with Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) joining forces against the Cobra Kai school. Per their agreement with the school's returning sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove), the All-Valley Tournament will decide which dojo will continue on, with the loser to close their doors forever.
Unfortunately, Johnny and Daniel's past conflicts keep them from teaching as a unit until it's too late. Meanwhile, Kreese recruits his old friend Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) to help train his students for the tournament. Cobra Kai's leading students Robby (Tanner Buchanan) and Tory (Peyton List) are also more determined than anyone to win. In the end, Tory defeats Samantha LaRusso (Mary Mouser) in the final match, giving Cobra Kai the victory.
Despite the outcome of Cobra Kai season 4, the tournament and the events leading up to it leave everyone involved in a very different place than they were expecting. Robby and Tory in particular are changed by the experience, as are Johnny and Daniel. With the two teachers managing to bury the hatchet at last during the All-Valley Tournament, there are several reasons to think that they might team-up again to bring the students of Cobra Kai, Eagle Fang, and Miyagi-Do all under their tutelage.
Robby & Tory Are Realizing Cobra Kai's Negative Influence
Tory and Robby enter season 4 with their thirst for vengeance dominating their minds, but both leave it realizing how much that mindset has led them astray. Robby’s drive to win the All-Valley Tournament isn’t due to any real loyalty to Cobra Kai on his part, but simply as a way to make his hatred of his father Johnny clearer than ever. The general aggression that Tory's difficult life has instilled her with and her grudge against Sam is also what drives her, and both she and Robby use Cobra Kai purely a vehicle for payback.
Robby starts to realize how much he’d let his anger at Johnny cloud his judgment when he sees Kenny filled with the ruthlessness Cobra Kai is known for. Meanwhile, despite Tory’s victory in the tournament over Sam, it comes after Amanda LaRusso has gone out of her way to try to mend the fence with Tory. She also learns at the end that Cobra Kai’s victory came out of Terry silver bribing the judge. This leaves the already unsure Tory disillusioned with the win she thought she’d earned. As Robby tearfully reconciles with Johnny, both he and Tory realize how much Cobra Kai has poisoned their minds and those of their fellow students.
Johnny & Daniel Are Concerned For Cobra Kai's Students Too
Despite their history, Johnny and Daniel were always aware of how damaging Cobra Kai’s teachings are, but both are distinctly more concerned about it than ever by the end of season 4. Johnny realizes that pushing Miguel to show the superiority of Eagle Fang over Miyagi-Do in the tournament was a residual effect of his own Cobra Kai days. When Miguel departs for Mexico City to try to find his father, Johnny recognizes his own culpability in that and promises to bring Miguel home.
Meanwhile, Daniel has no intention of keeping his word to about retiring from teaching after Cobra Kai’s victory, telling Mr. Miyagi on his grave that he cannot “honor an agreement with men who have none”, with Chozen arriving to join forces with Daniel to bring down Cobra Kai. While all this sets up an even bigger conflict in season 5, Johnny and Daniel’s enmity rests only with Kreese, Silver, and the Cobra Kai philosophy rather than their students, and that is the crucial to understanding how they’ll approach their showdown with Cobra Kai.
Why Cobra Kai's Students Could Unite With Miyagi-Do & Eagle Fang's
Johnny and Daniel’s efforts to teach the students of Eagle Fang and Miyagi-Do as a team goes anything but smoothly. Despite this, they finally find common ground during the tournament in how they coach their students against Cobra Kai’s. Both of them also wanted to put a stop to Cobra Kai out of knowing what Kreese and Silver are turning their impressionable young students into, with Johnny having firsthand experience with that. While another conflict with Cobra Kai is inevitable in season 5, it could take Johnny and Daniel’s concern for the school’s student to its furthest conclusion by having the two bring them into a school they oversee together.
To be sure, hard as it may be, Johnny and Daniel's bitterness towards each other still needs to be eliminated for them to teach as a unit. At the same time, both have opened their minds a great deal, so recognizing that the school of karate each of them champions has value and bringing both together could create a new way of fighting, as Daniel remembers Miyagi once told him was the highest aim of karate. All of this could mean that season 5’s arc will be about Johnny and Daniel facing Cobra Kai once more (the school now under Silver’s sole leadership after his betrayal of Kreese) and bringing the school’s students under their wing, with the students of Miyagi-Do, Eagle Fang, and Cobra Kai learning alongside each other rather than being foes.
With Cobra Kai's season 5 having already finished filming and set to build on Silver's role in The Karate Kid Part III, it seems likely that viewers will learn before long when it will hit Netflix. While season 4 put all of its characters on different arcs, Johnny and Daniel learned together how much their rivalry from childhood was impacting them as karate teachers. Robby and Tory similarly come to realize that their anger was being weaponized. As Daniel prepares to lead the charge against Silver in season 5, defeating Cobra Kai now comes down to a philosophical battle as much as a physical one. All three schools united as one would bring out the best in each and the potential of every student in them, as Johnny and Daniel would surely recognize. For Cobra Kai season 5, this could be just the outcome the show is headed towards.