Ralph Macchio and William Zabka on Cobra Kai season 3 and making Daniel the bad guy
TV Features Cobra Kai
First Cobra Kai was on YouTube Red, then it moved to Netflix. First the Karate Kid sequel series’ third season was going to launch on January 8, then it moved to January 1. First Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso was the hero and William Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence was the villain, then things got more complicated.
“You sort of did a switcheroo because it sort of switched from good guy to bad guy with you guys, that was interesting to see,” David Spade tells the two actors in a clip exclusive to The A.V. Club from his new talk show The Netflix Afterparty.
“Well, it was way at the onset…. The angle opening this show was how to get into the Karate Kid universe from a different perspective,” Macchio tells Afterparty hosts Spade, Fortune Feimster, and London Hughes, as well as guest host Bill Burr in the clip above. “We knew there was going to be a redemption story [for Johnny] going in, how gray the areas were, and how LaRusso and Lawrence—at certain times—would become the antagonist to the other, is part of the fun of it all…. That’s the thing that’s the most different from the Karate Kid films, which were so clearly black and white, good over evil. Daniel Good. Johnny Bad.”
“All they had to do is give Johnny a little redemptive…just a little goodness,” adds Zabka. “He was so bad for three decades. He was the biggest jerk. He was the villain. But it flips.”
The Cobra Kai cast is the first to appear in full on Netflix’s new weekly talk show, which The A.V. Club
can exclusively reveal will debut new episodes every Saturday beginning
January 2. The Netflix Afterparty is hosted by Spade, Feimster, and
Hughes, with a different Netflix comedian joining them as co-host to a
different Netflix cast each week. The series launched on December 13
with a special end of year wrap up show which included cast members from The Crown, Queen’s Gambit, Emily in Paris, Tiger King and Love is Blind. Upcoming episodes will include the casts of Bridgerton and Bling Empire.
Read our Cobra Kai season three review here:
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36 Comments
William Zabka is so hot now. My inner bullied child is so confused right now.
That headline is total BS. One of the show’s greatest achievements is how it’s able to make Johnny into a more sympathetic character WITHOUT destroying Daniel and revealing him to actually be a total jackass.
It is literally the question the cast talks about in the sorry below.
I agree. Daniel is far from being the villain in the show. What this show has been successful at doing is showing that both are FLAWED characters equally capable of being jerks in their own right. Unfortunately, a lot of people never saw Karate Kid III and season 2 heavily references it. Karate Kid III explains Daniel’s deep mistrust of Cobra Kai and why he wants to stop them. Long time fans who’ve watched the movies can pick up subtle callbacks to KK3. Without the context from that movie, Daniel comes off petty. Watching it and knowing the hell they put him through makes his motivations to stop them completely valid. Seeing how Kreese has manipulated Johnny the same way he did Daniel in KK3, Daniel was right to stop Cobra Kai all along. But my one gripe with the show is Daniel is underwritten as a character. Ralph is very capable at handling emotional beats but the show rarely gives him the material to. Hopefully, season 3 changes that.
Yeah, I had a thought that there aren’t any actual villains on the show. Except Kreese of course.Most of the conflict is just dumb misunderstandings, which I usually hate as a plot device, but since the two protagonists don’t even like each other it makes sense.
The worst part about the second season was making Cobra Kai into a cartoon again. All of the bullied in season one became bullies and they made a big mistake bring back Kreese. I guess they will always have season one, when this show surprised. In season 3, they really have to go back to what made season one such a surprise good show.
Agree. Season 2 blew.
The most interesting thing about season 1 (and what made it a surprise) was the thought that if done right, Cobra Kai’s karate was a perfectly acceptable form of Karate and not evil, the same way Johnny was not really evil. Season 2 went completely back on that to the movie theme that “Daniel’s Karate good, Cobra bad and will always lead to bullies”. If that is the point they cannot get away from, then this whole series really has nothing new to offer from the old movies and it is just nostalgia and a cartoon, like everyone expected.
While I think Season 2 was inferior, it was still quite good. And I disagree about what it says. Cobra Kai *under Kreese* is bad. I actually appreciate this because it underscores your point. Cobra Kai isn’t the problem, Kreese is the problem. And always was. Hawk might have avoided becoming a bully if Johnny hadn’t been out of action as mentor. I preferred the nuance of the first season but as a screenwriter and teacher of screenwriters, I appreciate how hard it is to avoid “plain-dealing” villains. I agree that the show needs to return to nuance and I’m not at all interested in Kreese so here’s hoping that story gets resolved early.
What did we expect when Kreese got back in the game?
Actually, I had some hope for a Johnny-style redemption when they revealed that he was living at a shelter and lying about his life. A humbled Kreese could have been interesting. I was most disappointed when he turned out to be the same old bastard.
I liked season one more in a lot of ways, but I think season two had interesting things to say about the “good guy with a [karate kick]” narrative not being guaranteed to play out as intended. Sometimes the bad guy is really just a normal kid, and sometimes the good guy gets caught up in the moment and ends up kicking the bad guy off a balcony and ending up the bad guy. The Karate Kid was huge for me as a kid, and I think the focus on ethics is what elevates the original movie beyond Rocky for kids. I’m really enjoying watching them examine that from different angles.
That’s because Season 2 heavily references Karate Kid III. There are a lot of similarities of how the Cobra Kai kids sort of lost their way the same way Daniel did in the movie.
I liked S2 personally mainly because I did think it was interesting to show how bullied people can quickly turn into bullies themselves with a bit of power and poor influence. It rang true to me, more so than how shows and movies typically portray bullied kids as being nice and responsible when they learn to fight back. And while I don’t love Kreese, it is nice for the show to have an actual antagonist so the conflict doesn’t have to be entirely based on lack of communication between Johnny and Daniel. Because the title of this article is wrong, Daniel is not the villain of this show, he’s just a second flawed protagonist.
An antagonist doesn’t have to be a villain. Kreese could have been focused on winning as the end goal to the detriment of sportsmanship. That’s not villainy, that’s aggression. The show stumbled, imo, by regressing Cobra Kai to a dickhead dojo and keeping Kreese overtly evil. Calling Daniel a villain IS wrong but he IS Johnny’s antagonist. And that’s fine. Honestly I suspect that Macchio wanted to let Daniel off the hook more in season 2. He is kind of an egomaniac in the first season and I appreciated that. Because it’s Johnny’s show. (And to a lesser extent the kids.) I’m actually not thrilled by how much the third season trailers have focused on Daniel.
My point was more that Daniel wasn’t a good antagonist to Johnny beyond a few episodes. Neither is really a bad person so their clashes were results of some comical miscommunications. Which gets old pretty quickly.I also don’t know if it is Johnny’s show anymore, the second season pretty equally focuses on him and Daniel. And this next season seems to be them combining forces.
What I like about the Daniel/Johnny conflict *is* that neither is a “bad” person. It’s fine to have a villain but it’s also cheap and easy. It’s not just miscommunication between Daniel and Johnny. It’s a difference in philosophy. I like the idea that two people can be opposed in approach but equally decent human beings. Kreese is just an asshole. That’s convenient, it gives the show a way to move forward. I get it. But I think IF the writers wanted to, they could have retained the nuance of non-villain antagonism.ETA: You know what antagonist the show brought up? Kreese even mentions it to Johnny.Money.Johnny doesn’t know how to run a business. Why couldn’t that have been the tension? Kreese didn’t have to be evil, he could’ve just had a better head for the running of a school. My brother is an excellent martial artist. He tried running a school twice. It is HARD and most fail.
I dunno, I may be misremembering S1 but a couple of conflicts I remember are:Daniel hears that Johnny beat up a bunch of kids, not realizing he was defending himself and Miguel because he doesn’t know his daughter’s date is a dickheadJohnny realizes Samantha was in the car during the hit and run and assumes Daniel knew about it and laughed it offJohnny thinks Daniel ordered his cousin to burn his belongings, not realizing Daniel’s cousin is a boneheadJohnny gets pissed at Daniel for mentoring his son, but Daniel has no idea he is Johnny’s sonDaniel gets pissed at Johnny for allowing Samantha to sleep off a hangover, even though it’s mostly Samantha’s faultEven their philosophies on karate aren’t that different, Johnny doesn’t embrace every aspect of the old Cobra Kai philosophy and he is mainly trying to teach bullied kids how to defend themselves. Daniel just assumes it’s the old Cobra Kai. The few episodes they actually sit and have a conversation, they mostly find they have a lot in common.
Johnny resents Daniel’s success. That’s not a matter of misunderstanding. Daniel suspects Johnny of aggression. Which is true, if more nuanced than Daniel credits him. Daniel mentoring Johnny’s kid isn’t just misunderstanding. Even when Daniel finds out he doesn’t stop. Johnny has guilt over being a deadbeat dad. Daniel knows how it is to not have that father figure. That tension isn’t just a misunderstanding. I would agree that those two could avoid some of their conflict if they had a few conversations, but the show gives them a few (as you point out) and they still aren’t seeing eye to eye. Which I like as it demonstrates the nuance of characters.
I keep waiting for Daniel and Johnny to take on Kreese, once and for all. I’m liking this show, but it had gotten ridiculous on S2. All the vandalism, fighting and mayhem all over LA, and not a cop in sight?
Yeah, the minute Kreese showed up, I completely lost interest.
Season 2 had problems (too much Kreese; and yeah, Cobra Kai becoming too bully-ish)…but it had a lot of high points too:-Courtney Henggeler continued her streak as the show’s secret weapon. She’s so good as Daniel’s wife. She’s the voice of reason, the Greek chorus getting everything right… plus she has some of the best one-liners (“they have warring karate dojos” has become standard patter in our household);-the episode where Johnny “gets the gang back together” was great. From what I’ve read, those Cobra Kai actors stayed friends in real life after the first film; and you can tell their chemistry was real. Those scenes just felt like middle aged dads hanging out (in the best possible way, if that makes sense), and really helped nail how CK has dragged and drained on Johnny for his entire adult life.-Pretty much any time Zabka has been on screen was great. More Johnny; and kill off Samantha and Robbie in a gruesome, vile, and bloody death; and make sure to burn Robbie’s hair so there’s no chance of resurrection.-The Final fight was just stupid and awesome.
Disagree on Samantha and Robbie. I like all the young’uns on the show. SUPER disappointing that Aisha is out for S3.
I have no idea why Aisha is out. She was one of my favorites. Makes no sense to write her off so unceremoniously. And I don’t think the actress wanted off the show or anything. There has to be something going on behind the scenes because it just doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, it’s a lame excuse to me that the writers had nothing for her. Okay, but we can spend multiple episodes on Daniel’s trip to Okinawa? His goomba cousin gets to come back? I like Ali but why did a nostalgia pull like her or Chozen get screen time instead of bringing back Aisha? It’s very suspect.
Saw the photo with the story and had to look it up – Ralph Macchio is ALMOST 60 YEARS OLD!!!!! He is 59. 59! 59?!? Daniel-san looking about 30 in that photo (and barely that).
What really should blow your mind is that Pat Morita was only 51 when Karate Kid came out.
So Ralph is Dorian Grey and Pat was the picture. Not exactly what I thought the nature of the sensei/senpai relationship was, but then again I quit karate when I was 12, so maybe that comes later.
Macch don’t crack.
Mistook William Zabka for Kenny Johnson (The Shield’s Lem).
This is why he played teenagers into his thirties and it wasn’t at all a stretch!
Why wasn’t he on 90210?
Have the creators of Cobra Kai ever said if How I Met Your Mother played a role in this show being made?
Because “Daniel was the real villain” was a running gag that Barney believed throughout HIMYM and Zabka even extensively appeared throughout the final season playing himself.
“BOTH SIDES!”
how the fuck does everybody not hate what this show did with Daniel? Daniel never shouldve been the villain. Period. it was just a shitty way to put a twist on it.
Daniel’s not a bad guy. Johnny put him through alot so Daniel has good reason to always doubt his motives and words. Johnny doesn’t exactly help himself when he does things like vandalize Daniel’s property without provocation. Daniel has actually tried multiple times to end the beef and even told Robby to forgive Johnny.