The Comeback Kids

Three Decades After The Original, Ralph Macchio And William Zabka Are Back Starring In Youtube Red’s New Series Cobra Kai, But This Is No Karate Kid Retread.

- Jason Lynch

In the iconic 1984 film The Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso’s sensei, Mr. Miyagi, tells his protégé, “man who catch fly with chopsticks, accomplish anything.” Well, perhaps anything except convince Ralph Macchio, who played LaRusso in three Karate Kid films, or William Zabka, who portrayed his nemesis Johnny Lawrence in two movies, to return to the franchise. “I’ve always been very protective of this franchise and this role. I said no for 30 years because it was always easier to let the legacy stand as what it was, as opposed to try to go back to the well and fall short,” says Macchio. Or as Zabka puts it: “There’s the danger of you tip your hat too much in that way, and there’s no way to get out of it. I always joke that my career’s over the day I do a flying sidekick to a potato chip in a headband as a commercial. That was the thing I feared the most.”

But now, 34 years later, Macchio and Zabka have reunited for the new series Cobra Kai, a modern-day revival of the Karate Kid franchise, which spawned two sequels, a 1994 revamp (with Hilary Swank stepping in for Macchio) and a 2010 reboot, starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. Yet even more surprising than their return is the platform that the new dramedy is airing on. After interest from streaming heavyweights like Netflix and Hulu and linear networks like TBS about airing the series, all 10 episodes of Cobra Kai’s first season will be streaming on YouTube Red—You- Tube’s subscription video on demand (SVOD) service—beginning Wednesday, May 2.