Everything You Need to Know About Cobra Kai's Season 3 Finale

Daniel experiences a series of personal shifts throughout season three, relating to his car dealership, karate dojo Miyagi-Do, and even his relationship with his wife. While the LaRusso Auto Group is on the up and up from the beginning of the series onward, propelled to success by Daniel's famous karate wins, season three shows that is no longer the case. The giant karate fight between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do at the end of season two (the one that left Miguel in a coma) tarnishes the dealership's reputation, and his wife Amanda disapproves of most of Daniel's decisions.

Making matters worse, LaRusso's main competitor makes a move with their Japanese car distributor to put them out of business. But not to fret: by the end of season three, Daniel saves the day by flying to Japan and taking matters into his own hands, meeting a woman he once saved in a typhoon (see The Karate Kid Part II) who agrees to save his dealership. On the family front, he also helps his daughter Sam recover from fight trauma, passing along Miyagi's teachings. By the end of the season finale, Daniel has learned that he and Johnny are much more alike than they thought possible, joining forces between both dojos to defeat Kreese's Cobra Kai. Together, they beat up Kreese, merge into one fighting unit, and agree to Kreese's proposed tournament to take him down for good.

The end of season two finds Miguel in a devastating coma, and season three is all about his healing journey. While in a coma, he can't stop having karate-themed nightmares, where he's constantly missing his opponent. Johnny breaks into the hospital to give Miguel a pep talk that brings him out of the coma, but he still does not have the ability to walk. Miguel ends up blaming Johnny for telling him to show mercy to Robby in the big showdown, leading to the coma and massive injuries. In response, Johnny and Sam pitch in to fund Miguel's experimental surgery (Johnny by stealing a statue, Sam by a car wash fundraiser) and soon enough, Miguel begins to get better. Johnny employs strange tactics to get Miguel to walk again (like lighting his foot on fire) and taking him to a concert actually works as the beat prompts him to tap his foot. (This show is not medically sound.)

On the personal front, Miguel is dejected as he feels his entire friend group has abandoned him. Johnny continues to help him walk, even using a harness, and Miguel inspires him to become a sensei again and open his own dojo. Miguel ends up gaining back his ability to walk (and fight), returning to school and joining Johnny's new dojo Eagle Fang. Sparks fly between him and Sam, leading to a budding relationship between the two. By the final episode, Miguel helps defeat Cobra Kai at the LaRusso house, defeating bully Trevor in the kitchen and getting his mojo back.

Season three finds Daniel's daughter Sam dealing with all kinds of trauma from the face-off against Cobra Kai at the end of season two. She is especially terrified of Tory, dealing with a claw scar from the fight, and a fear of railings. She questions if Miyagi-Do are the good guys after all, and continues to feel isolated and unlike herself throughout the season. Her father Daniel is a constant comfort to her, inspiring her to face her problems head-on and confront her fears. She starts by showing off her scar and devises a plan to fight Cobra Kai at P.E., but an impromptu battle at an abandoned laser arcade shows she's still traumatized by Tory.

Sam finds herself falling for Miguel, giving him a love note at the hospital and taking their relationship further once he's healed. A fishing trip and more help from her father finally push Sam to feel like herself again, and she goes back to being a no-holds-barred fighter like before. Her relationship with Robby sours after he finds out about her and Miguel, further highlighting the division between Robby and Cobra Kai, and the rest of the Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang group. At the end of the season, Sam finally faces off against Tory in her house, giving it her all and winning the fight.

Robby has a difficult time throughout season three, and he doesn't have a redemption story like the other characters do. The season starts off with Robby nowhere to be found, since he took off after the big karate fight that left Miguel in a coma. Johnny and Daniel team up to find him, eventually finding him at his mother's rehab facility after countless failed leads. Daniel calls the cops and corners Robby, leading to Robby spending most of the season in a juvenile detention centre. There, he tries to spend most of his time laying low by reading and serving in the soup kitchen, but is cornered by bullies, and disappointed by his dad Johnny that fails to show up when he says he will. Robby continues to despise Miguel, feeling abandoned by both his dad and Sam for him.

Robby cements his role as being on the dark side in this season, teaming up with the bullies in the juvenile detention centre, and going straight to Kreese and Cobra Kai once he's out. His rage towards Johnny, Daniel, Miguel, his own mother, and Sam is evident, and it goes perfectly with Kreese's philosophy. By the end of the season, a fight occurs at Cobra Kai between Kreese, Johnny and Robby that ends up with Johnny knocking Robby out. By the end, Robby has abandoned both Johnny and Daniel, and is 100% on team evil, aka Kreese and Cobra Kai.

Johnny has our favourite redemption story of the series, showing that even though he doesn't always get it right (maybe an understatement), his heart is really in the right place. We know that in previous seasons, Johnny goes from a round-the-clock hater of Daniel's success, to teaching Miguel and starting Cobra Kai, to eventually losing his dojo to Kreese and his evil ways. Season three sees a new Johnny: one who has learned from his past mistakes, and is seeing that Kreese's merciless mentality only causes inner turmoil in the long run.

At the start of season three, Johnny is feeling sorry for himself and turning to lots of beer, desperately trying to see coma-stricken Miguel at the hospital. As he tries to help Miguel wake up from the coma and eventually teach him how to walk again through unconventional tactics (fire, questionable magazines, and a Twisted Sister concert), even stealing a statue to fund his surgery, Johnny also tries to rebuild his relationship with his son Robby, which is still rocky to say the least.

This character fully evolves throughout the season, getting closer to Daniel and understanding his perspective, and seeing how similar their mentalities are as they go on missions to find Robby and defeat Kreese. He starts his own dojo, Eagle Fang, joining forces with Daniel and Miyagi-Do, and continues to change, even finding possible love with Miguel's mom Carmen and his old flame Ali (learning how to use Facebook along the way). Although Johnny still can't recover his relationship with son Robby by the end of the season (knocking him out at Cobra Kai probably won't help) it's safe to say Johnny ends up on the good side after all, fully rejecting Kreese's way of life.

Although Kreese barely evolves in season three, keeping his cold-blooded attitude throughout, a series of flashbacks show us just how he became so evil. The beginning of the season shows us that Kreese has fully taken over Cobra Kai, leaving former sensei Johnny out for good, and he continues to impart his cruel tactics on new students.

A flashback to the '60s shows that Kreese was once a soft-spoken waiter at a diner, bullied by the popular kids. He uses his karate skills for the first time when he sees a football star hit his girlfriend, enamoring her in the process. But going off to the Vietnam War changes Kreese forever, giving him a killer mentality he'll never be able to shake.

By the end of the season, we see young Kreese make a mistake at Vietnam that leads to the death of his friend Ponytail. Later, as a prisoner of war, he must fight his captain to the death, learning beforehand that the love of his life Betsy was killed in a car accident. These moments at war taught Kreese he must "kill or be killed," and it's clear that his trauma informs his approach to life. Back to the present, Kreese demonstrates that he can have tinges of compassion, such as when he defends Tory from her building's landlord and convinces her to go back to Cobra Kai, or when he gives pep talks to Johnny at a bar, and Robby at juvie. However, his treatment towards Daniel and Amanda is downright evil, even letting a snake loose in their car dealership.

Once Johnny creates Eagle Fang, it's open season on both them and Miyagi-Do, but by the end, Daniel and Johnny team up to beat up Kreese. Afterwards, Kreese proposes an official tournament to see who's the real winner after all.

Tory keeps her allegiance to her dojo throughout the season, staying true to Cobra Kai and Kreese. She gave Sam a serious case of trauma in season two, but her anger and killer instinct is clearly a learned behaviour from her difficult upbringing. Dealing with a sick mother, and having to work to provide for her family, Tory must navigate being a caretaker and fending off the advances of her building's creepy landlord.

Almost too much to take, Tory almost leaves Cobra Kai, but Kreese convinces her to stay and keep on fighting. Battling out at the laser tag arcade shows she still has what it takes (especially intimidating Sam), and her protective (yet manipulative) side comes out when she tells Robby that Sam isn't good to him. That being said, it's also clear she wants him to stay in Cobra Kai and convinces him to face his problems and help them win. By the end, Tory is finally defeated by Sam at their final face-off, at least for now.

Hawk starts off the season squarely in team Cobra Kai, but by the end, his alliances become more hazy than ever. As one of the best fighters of Cobra Kai, only second to Miguel (when he was a part of the dojo) and possibly Tory, Hawk is fierce, using it to his advantage when trying to impress girls at school. Throughout the season, he takes Cobra Kai's motto to heart: he thinks up a plan to steal Miguel's fundraiser money from Sam and give it directly to Miguel (so Miyagi-Do doesn't get the credit), destroys Demetri's huge Lego sculpture at school, and manipulates teachers to get Saturday detention for Sam and the rest of the crew.

In the cruelest of moves this season, Hawk purposefully breaks Demetri's arm at the laser tag arcade, and continues his cold-blooded attitude against new Cobra Kai members. As Robby fully joins Cobra Kai, Hawk feels jealous that he's winning over the rest of the dojo, and by the end of the season, a total shift occurs. During the final fight at the LaRusso home, Hawk turns against the Cobras and joins Demetri in defeating the evil side, becoming a de facto member of Miyagi-Do.