Merry Christmas to fans of The Karate Kid! Netflix has a special treat for you.
The Cobra Kai spin-off series, which started life as a YouTube original before moving to Netflix in June 2020, is arriving one entire week earlier than expected. The Season 3 premiere had originally been set for Jan. 8, but Netflix announced a Jan. 1 premiere in a little video short featuring star William Zabka.
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Zabka played Johnny Lawrence in the first Karate Kid movie, serving as the main antagonist to star Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso. Cobra Kai largely serves as a redemption story for Johnny, picking up 34 years after the first movie as he re-opens the titular dojo that taught him to fight. But where the Cobra Kai of old provided, essentially, training for bullies, Johnny’s new take is aimed more at guiding trainees toward a more positive path.
The show was one of YouTube’s few original series’ that really landed, with two successful seasons there before the company’s business plan changed and Netflix swooped in to grab Cobra Kai. So the imminent launch of Season 3 — which completed production no later than summer 2020, if not before — is the first time Netflix subscribers will have access to all-new episodes.
The streaming content provider already signed off on a fourth season, too, so there’s even more Cobra Kai to come.
To go along with the surprise early premiere news, Netflix also released this statement from an in-character Johnny: “I heard you all whining about Season 3 taking forever. So I called the pawn shop and the guy walked me through this Netflix thing. Dude knows his stuff. Now you get it a week early. See you on New Year’s, nerds.”
You can check out Seasons 1 and 2 of Cobra Kai on Netflix right now and then return on Jan. 1 to get your binge on with Season 3.