Christmas might not be until tomorrow, but Netflix have given Cobra Kai fans an unexpected early present by announcing that the hotly-anticipated third season of the Karate Kid sequel series will be released a full week ahead of schedule. The upcoming batch of episodes was initially set to hit the streaming service on January 8th, but will instead be available on New Year’s Day.
The first two seasons dominated the most-watched list when they came to Netflix during the summer, and based on the numbers the show pulled in, Cobra Kai has only grown its audience in the months since. In fact, looking at the viewing figures so far, coupled with the fact that there will be a lot of sore heads from the previous evening’s celebrations, it seems there are going to be tons of people spending the majority of January 1st bingeing all ten of the new episodes.
Season 3 is set to expand the scope of the series even further, with Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso heading back to Okinawa to reconnect with the spirit of his mentor Mr. Miyagi. The Karate Kid Part II stars Tamlyn Tomita and Yuji Okumoto are returning as Kumiko and Chozen, while co-creator Josh Hurwitz recently admitted that talk of a Hilary Swank cameo gets brought up in the writers’ room all the time.
Even Netflix subscribers that have never seen an episode of Cobra Kai before might find themselves being tempted into checking out season 1 or 2 now. After all, you can barely scroll through the app’s homepage without seeing it advertised everywhere you look, and New Year’s Day is hardly characterized by people being busy or productive. In fact, the first day of the year almost demands that everybody stay indoors and gather around the television, meaning The Karate Kid sequel series is poised to perform very well when it debuts its new run.