My Review of "Cobra Kai: Season 3"

Cobra Kai: Season 3 is the latest season that has been released in 2021. I guess it's my first official review of 2021 with a 2021 show. I mentioned in my last review of season 2 that it was a bit of a departure from the first season. I was worried that the third season would continue with this direction. In a sense the it did but at least it kind of found itself and I'm not used to the nonsensical soap opera antics of this franchise.

The season starts off with the huge cliffhanger of Miguel falling off the staircase from the big school fight at the end of the second season. The second season was this huge brooding season that culminated to this third season's craziness. That's not to say season 2 wasn't crazy itself.

They had a kind of meeting of the minds with Daniel and Johnny by the end of season 2. They still don't like each other but you can see that the two are slowly becoming friends as the seasons continue. It's kind of nice to see especially since you know the whole history behind these two characters. Of course it wasn't too hard to see this happening eventually.

The big thing of season 2 was the division of the friends and seeing how Kreese was able to build on the kids' angsty teenager attitudes. It works pretty well because teenagers all think that they are being picked on no matter what happens. Kreese just simply pushes these insecurities that they have on life and uses their perspectives in his favor. This pretty much continues in this third season.

Robby's character has less of a presence in this season which was kind of a good thing. I couldn't take his whining and brooding all the time. His character is really annoying. I couldn't take too much angry angsty teenagers around. We already have Hawk and Tori to to fill in this hole.

There was a departure of the character Aisha probably because they wanted to go full on good guys versus bad and they can't have any ambiguous characters to confuse the audience. This third season went full out binary to further simply the series. They try to humanize Kreese's character but still it didn't really work for me. How can he not realize he's on American soil and they're all Americans? Why start fights with your fellow citizens?

This season went so off the rails with the fighting. They get into such ridiculous situations. It's a good thing none of these kids ever thought of buying a gun and bringing their gang wars to the next level. They're going after each other and Kreese is telling them no mercy. How is that not asking one of the kids to push to the next level since it's all about bullying.

I was also not impressed that they under utilized some of the characters. In the last season they built up this Moon character and then played her off as a token character as she then became a bi-sexual/pansexual character. They simply ignored her altogether in this season and wrote her off. They added another female character as a love interest but didn't really develop her character. She's just simply added to the show to help out a joke.

The whole season is quite silly. They had this whole expedition with Daniel going to Japan. It seemed that was a side plot they added in so that they could bring back memories of one of the earlier movie sequels when he went to Japan. I get it, it's the pander to the old fans. They did a few of these instances, it happened in the second season as well.

Overall, it was a somewhat uneven season. It started off strong then started to lose steam and then caught some extra steam closer to the end of the season. I'm starting to understand the quirky goofy soap opera of this series. I get a lot more of this series now. Still I have to give this season a 6.5 out of 10. There is some enjoyment in this season but there is a huge lull in the middle of the season. I'm kind of indifferent about the fourth season now. I'll probably watch it but I'm not in huge anticipation for it anymore.