It wasn’t until the more derivative third film, when Martin Kreese and Cobra Kai staged a convoluted revenge plot against Daniel-san, that the franchise began to feel stale. By making Daniel’s high school nemesis Johnny Lawrence into the Miyagi figure as an adult, YouTube Premium’s Cobra Kai cleverly upended the series’ old formula for the small screen. The show’s first season kept mixing and matching tropes from the movies – including Johnny training the Daniel-esque Miguel, while Daniel in turn became mentor to Johnny’s estranged son Robby – and turned out to be far more entertaining than it had any business being. Cobra Kai could have stuck to the spirit of the films by doing something relatively different for its sequel season. But rather than attempting its own spiritual version of the Okinawa trip, Season Two is largely content to play with minor variations on what worked last year, while also borrowing more plot from Part III than is advisable.