Cobra Kai “No Mercy” Review: The Season 2 Finale and Its Fallout

Cobra Kai "No Mercy" review: a finale built on a war

Cobra Kai won the All-Valley Karate Tournament the year before, with Miguel, played by Xolo Maridueña, taking the title through questionable tactics against Robby, played by Tanner Buchanan. By season 2, the bad blood between the two dojos has grown into a summer-long feud, fueled in large part by John Kreese, played by Martin Kove. This time, the resolution does not come at a tournament. "No Mercy," directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg from a teleplay by Joe Piarulli and Luan Thomas, settles it in a high school hallway.

For newcomers, the context is simple. Cobra Kai picks up the story of The Karate Kid more than three decades after the original film, with Macchio and Zabka returning as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence. The series flips the sympathies of the film by following Johnny, the old bully, as he reopens the Cobra Kai dojo, and then spends its second season asking what the rivalry has done to the next generation. A finale like this one only works if the audience already cares about the kids, and by episode ten they do.

The ten-week countdown to this finale was a chance for the show to reward its long-time viewers and to surprise veterans of the original films. It succeeds at both. The first stretch picks up directly from the previous episode, "Pulpo," in which Robby brought a drunk Sam, played by Mary Mouser, to his father's apartment after a party that police broke up. The cops arrested minors under the influence, much as Daniel, played by Ralph Macchio, did to Johnny, played by William Zabka, decades earlier. The powder keg was set, and the finale lights the fuse.

The season was always a metaphor for war and conflict. Kreese tells Daniel earlier that a war is coming, and the finale is the war. It ends with a victory for Miyagi-Do that nobody is able to celebrate. What matters in the finale is the order of operations: spectacle first, then price.

Johnny, Daniel and the fight 30 years in the making

The opening confrontation between Daniel and Johnny is cleanly choreographed and cut. The kicks and punches are interspersed with shots of their original fight at the All-Valley Championship more than 30 years ago, and the cross-cutting turns a brawl into a conversation between two eras. The only complaint is that it ends too soon. It reads as a preview of a bigger fight to come in a later season.

The sequence works because it respects the history. Macchio and Zabka have been circling each other for two seasons, and a short, brutal exchange does more than a long one would. It also sets the adult mood for the rest of the hour: these men are no longer in control of the war they started.

The school fight

The action moves to the first day of high school. Tory, played by Peyton List, believes that Sam kissing Miguel is all the provocation needed, and she hijacks the public address system to declare war. The moment is melodramatic, and Tory delivers it like a horror movie villain, which suits the show. What follows is ten minutes of chaos that any martial arts fan will appreciate, taking up roughly a third of the episode's running time.

Everyone gets a moment. "There are no rules," Tory tells Sam, wrapping her fist in an elastic bracelet laced with sharp studs, while Miguel and Robby fight each other in a misguided effort to stop the fight on their own terms. Bert and Nathaniel, the two small underdogs, go at it. The gentle giant Chris and Mitch face off. Hawk and Demetri finally get their match, and Demetri wins and apologizes for it, in perfect character. Stingray, played by Paul Walter Hauser, is interviewing to be a school security guard and tries to rough up some students to impress the principal, which is the funniest subplot in the episode.

Miyagi-Do comes away the clear winner on points, with Nathaniel, Chris, Demetri, Sam and Robby all taking their fights. It turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory. Robby kicks Miguel over the second-floor railing, and he lands spine-first on the stair rail below. The moment is as horrifying as it should be, and the camera stays on Robby as he realizes what he has done.

The fallout

The title carries the irony. "No Mercy" is the Cobra Kai motto, the creed Kreese has drilled into his students, and the finale turns it against the people who live by it. Miguel, the Cobra Kai champion, is the one who shows mercy, and it is mercy that gets him hurt. Robby, trained in Miyagi-Do's balance, is the one who lands the blow that nearly ends a friend's life. The reversal keeps the sides from being simple. Neither dojo comes out clean, and the finale makes a point of showing that the philosophies matter less than the moment a teenager decides what to do with his anger.

The finale hits every emotional note it is given. Johnny and Daniel have spent two seasons believing they run the world everyone else lives in. Their smack talk, proxy fights and intimidation games end with Miguel in the hospital with a major neck and spinal injury. That angers Carmen, played by Vanessa Rubio, and sets Daniel's wife Amanda, played by Courtney Henggeler, against her husband. Carmen blames Johnny for Miguel's behavior, even though Miguel showed Robby mercy during the fight, and Robby took advantage of it.

The most affecting beat is quiet. Standing outside Miguel's hospital room, Johnny receives a voicemail Miguel left earlier, in which the boy describes his girl troubles and asks if Johnny will take him out for a burger to talk it over, man to man. It is a side of Miguel the series has not shown in some time, and it shows why the fight cost so much.

What the ending sets up and the verdict

The closing stretch rearranges the pieces. Amanda tells Daniel there will be no more Cobra Kai and no more rivalry. Johnny returns to his dojo and finds Kreese there with his students, who have not been scared away by the violence. Kreese owns Cobra Kai now, having bought it out from under Johnny. After a night of drinking on the beach, Johnny tosses his cell phone into the sand, which is unfortunate timing, because he has just received a friend request from his ex-girlfriend Ali, played by Elisabeth Shue, who is not seen in the episode. Her character is a surgeon and Miguel is in the hospital, which invites a theory that has circulated among fans.

Miguel found his conscience and paid for it at the hands of a student who had ditched his, which gives the story a hard edge. With Miyagi-Do seemingly closing, Robby may head to Cobra Kai, now running at full steam. These are the sort of questions a good finale should leave, and Cobra Kai has the grace to ask them without answering. A season finale that ends on a hospital hallway, a lost dojo and a phone in the sand has set the table for everything that follows, and viewers are left holding the consequences instead of the celebration.

The episode is outstanding television, if slightly muddled in its message. On one hand, it is a joy to see the Miyagi-Do students beat their opposites in the school fight, and the mood in the moment is triumphant. On the other, the episode will not let the audience stay comfortable, and the final scenes turn the victory into a loss. The show also made a quiet point about violence with a shot of a student shoving a book called Violence in America into a locker.

Cobra Kai later left YouTube Premium. After the platform chose not to renew the series past a third season, Netflix acquired the rights and released seasons 1 and 2 on August 28, 2020. That move extended the show's life, and it meant the finale reached a far bigger audience than the one that saw it first, and it is easy to see why it had a future: this finale ends on a sharp mix of satisfaction and dread, with an audience counting the days until the next season.

Sources

• Cobra Kai, Wikipedia — cast, characters and season two details