Summary
Some perhaps ill-advised CGI Miyagi moments notwithstanding, Cobra Kai Season 6 delivers some of its strongest action, acting, and character work in Episode 13.
It was always a double-edged sword bringing the original cast of The Karate Kid back for Cobra Kai. Sure, it makes a lot of sense, but these weren’t exactly award-winners at the time, and you can’t say their careers took off wildly between the late ’80s and the show’s debut in 2018. It was a risk. Since Season 6 has been consistently turning up the emotion, it’s only right that it also demands more of its cast. And Episode 13, “Skeletons”, proves without a doubt that the right decision was made. William Zabka absolutely excels here.
It obviously helps that the show’s internal mythology has been so well-handled. “Skeletons” is very much a deliberate throwback to the first movie in various ways that I’ll identify, but aside from a perhaps ill-advised scene with Mr. Miyagi that is sprung to life with the help of a stunt double and I think CGI, it knows exactly which parts of the original story to latch onto; what to change and what to keep the same. For those of us who love that movie and its characters, this is a payoff several decades in the making.
Mainstream Miyagi-Do
If nothing else, Miyagi-do has made it. The return of the Sekai Taikai is heavily publicized in the mainstream media, and win or lose, the success of Mr. Miyagi’s famously defensive art cannot be disputed. But there’s still a tournament to be won, obviously.
Kreese is feeling contemplative too. He’s back from Korea and doing an apology tour of the Valley, visiting both Tory and Johnny to apologize for his failings. Tory obviously decides to rejoin the tournament as the last of Cobra Kai, but she’ll be doing so without any senseis since Kreese only has one last thing to do before he intends to completely step aside.
In an extremely deep cut, Darryl Vidal, a fighter Johnny beat in the semi-finals of the 1984 All-Valley Tournament, gets things underway.
History Repeats Itself
Axel and Robby kick things off rather literally for the male final. We’ve seen nothing of Axel in this last batch of episodes, which is a shame since he was becoming a fairly compelling character in Part 2, but no matter. He’s here to function as an obstacle, and he immediately proves to be more difficult to surmount than Robby expected.
When Robby gets the upper hand early, Axel adapts and begins to use entirely new moves and styles that weren’t programmed into FIGHT, throwing Robby for a loop. It takes some more pep talks, but he eventually adapts himself, making the match closer than Axel — or indeed Wolf and Silver — expected it to be.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so Wolf forces Axel to take the moral low ground. He grabs Robby’s knee and tears it apart. This, you’ll recall, is a direct throwback to the original movie, when Mr. Miyagi performed a magical heat massage to get Daniel back on the mats for his tournament-winning crane kick. But that won’t do for Robby. His injury is too severe. The “twist”, so to speak, is that he’s totally okay with it. Through his various failings throughout the seasons, he has learned that setbacks are simply part of the process.
But this doesn’t leave Miyagi-do in good standing. And since Tory is the only remaining member of Cobra Kai, who would be eligible to field a replacement champion to take on Axel, it looks like the Iron Dragons are going to progress to the final with an enormous points advantage.
William Zabka as Johnny Lawrence in Cobra Kai. Cr. Curtis Bonds Baker/Netflix © 2025
It Was All A Dream
The only aspect of Cobra Kai Season 6, Episode 13 that I’m not entirely sure about is a dream sequence involving Mr. Miyagi. Daniel, obviously fretting about the tournament, recalls the moment from the original movie when Johnny and his cronies, all dressed as skeletons, attacked him. Mr. Miyagi, looking and sounding extremely unconvincing, comes to his rescue in a brief fight that is a bit cynical but nonetheless gives Daniel some philosophical revelations.
In the aftermath of this, Daniel fully supports Robby and Sam’s subsequent decision to withdraw from the tournament after what happened to him. Daniel believes that Miyagi-do refusing to fight is, in its way, carrying on Miyagi’s pacifistic legacy, reiterating the idea that what karate fundamentally teaches you is that the fight you always win is the one you don’t have in the first place.
But Johnny doesn’t see things like this. And in his fury, he happens to run into Kreese and simply unloads on him for how terribly his behavior affected his life. Kreese can do nothing except take it, but in a beautiful Good Will Hunting-style “It’s not your fault” moment, Kreese embraces Johnny and refers to him as his son. He wishes there was a way he could make it up to him. And it turns out there is.
At the end of “Skeletons”, Cobra Kai fields a replacement for Robby — Miguel. Kreese has appointed Johnny as Cobra Kai’s new sensei, and any former members of the dojo, including Miguel, are eligible to compete. He and Tory both bow to Kreese in the crowd. He has finally redeemed himself.
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