Warning: SPOILERS for Cobra Kai Season 4.
One of the core tenets of Cobra Kai is to “strike first” but Cobra Kai season 4 redefines what it means to strike first. In Cobra Kai season 4, John Kreese (Martin Kove) recruited Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), his old Vietnam war buddy, to join him in his war against Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). But Silver, the villain from The Karate Kid Part III, is a very different kind of sensei and he brought a new dimension to how Cobra Kai fights their enemies.
Introduced in The Karate Kid, Cobra Kai’s mantra has been known to audiences for generations. Cobra Kai is “the way of the fist,” and the dojo Kreese and Silver founded has three simple rules: “Strike first, strike hard, no mercy.” For a Cobra Kai, these rules apply in competition, in combat, and in life. In a fight, a Cobra Kai is taught to always be on the offensive and that the best defense is more offense. Because “mercy is for the weak,” as Kreese likes to instruct his Cobra Kai students, striking first means ending the fight as quickly and as violently as possible to prove Cobra Kai’s toughness. The unwelcome side effect of being a Cobra Kai is that adhering to this uncompromising coda can turn a person into a bully who prizes aggression as the immediate answer to any problem.
However, Terry Silver operates on a different level from John Kreese and he pointed out a different way to “strike first” in Cobra Kai season 4. Silver spent the last 30 years rejecting “the way of the first,” but when Kreese reawakened his true Cobra Kai nature, Terry evaluated both Kreese’s students and the conflict against Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence his old friend was waging. One of the things that impressed Silver was that Kreese basically stole Johnny’s son, Robby Keene (Tanner Buchanan), from Lawrence. Over dinner, Terry explained to John that by turning Robby into a Cobra Kai, he “already struck first.” What Kreese never realized until it was too late was that Silver also determined that Johnny Lawrence was Kreese’s weakness, and Terry used it against him to take sole control over Cobra Kai.
In Cobra Kai season 4, “striking first,” doesn’t always mean doing so with violence. This is the lesson Samantha LaRusso (Mary Mouser) learned when she visited Aisha Robinson (Nichole Brown). Aisha was a Cobra Kai in seasons 1 and 2, which hurt her friendship with Sam, who was born into her father Daniel’s Miyagi-Do dojo. But Aisha moved away and is now removed from the karate drama in the San Fernando Valley. Aisha explained to Sam that she was bullied in her new school and she decided to “strike first” at her tormentor, but with kindness, not violence. Aisha’s method worked and she made a new best friend. So “striking first” can also be a good thing when Cobra Kai’s teachings are applied differently.
The theme of Cobra Kai season 4 has been the teenage students learning different styles of karate and finding “their way.” For Sam, integrating Miyagi-Do’s defense with the Cobra Kai-like, offense-based style of Johnny’s Eagle Fang karate was her feeding her own desire to “strike first” against her enemy, Tory Nichols (Peyton List), and Cobra Kai. Daniel himself also learned that he needs to “strike first” after Miyagi-Do lost at the All Valley Tournament, and he imported his “karate cousin,” Chozen Toguchi (Yuki Okumoto), to help him go on the offense against Cobra Kai. But perhaps Terry Silver striking first made the most impact when he framed Kreese for the attempted murder of Stingray (Paul Walter Hauser) so he could take over Cobra Kai. As redefined by Silver and Aisha in Cobra Kai season 4, striking first doesn’t require violence to get the job done.
Cobra Kai season 4 is streaming on Netflix.