'Cobra Kai' Season 3 Release Date Bumped Up One Week Earlier

Cobra Kai fans have been waiting patiently for the third season of The Karate Kid sequel series ever since it was announced that Netflix had picked it up from YouTube and would continue the story of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and the next generation of young fighters. Originally, new episodes were announced to premiere on January 8, but as a little Christmas present for the fans, the Cobra Kai season 3 release date has been bumped a little bit.

On Christmas Eve, Cobra Kai announced that the third season would be arriving on New Year's Day:

It seems like Netflix has a major security problem if Johnny Lawrence was able to just scroll to the Cobra Kai page and change the release date like it was just a document in Microsoft Word. But their lapse in internet safety is our gain now that we get to watch the third season of Cobra Kai during the upcoming New Year's holiday weekend.

In the second season of Cobra Kai, former dojo master John Kreese (Martin Kove) returned to help Johnny get his new team of karate students in shape. But it looks like Kreese took things too far by bringing back the ruthless attitude that turned Johnny and his friends into bullies in their younger years. That's not something Johnny was willing to tolerate this time, and that led to Kreese taking everything over.

This resulted in a new rivalry between the Cobra Kai dojo and Daniel's newly created Miyagi-Do Karate, which ended up landing Johnny's protege Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) in the hospital after a school fight with Daniel's student Robby Keene (Tanner Buchanan), who also happens to be Johnny's son. It appears Miguel will need some time to recover, but hopefully he'll be back to settle the score at the end of the season. What's in store for Robby after seriously injuring Miguel? It looks like he'll be spending some time in juvenile detention, and his karate skills might not be enough to keep him safe.

After this altercation, both Daniel and Johnny realize that they've failed as leaders, and they're ready to do something about John Kreese and the threat he brings to the next generation of karate kids. Will they go back to being rivals after all is said and done? Or could this be the start of a friendship?

We'll find out when Cobra Kai season 3 arrives on Netflix on January 1, 2021.