Netflix knows a hit when they have one & this even before the streamer has aired a single new original episode. Netflix acquired the first two seasons of Cobra Kai from YouTube which began streaming on its platform in August. The show has quickly become one of their most popular series & with the third season expected to premiere in 2021 exclusively on the streamer, Netflix has renewed the Karate Kid series for a fourth season way ahead of its season 3 launch.
The third season of the former YouTube original from Sony TV will launch as a Netflix original on January 8, 2021. Cobra Kai landed at Netflix after YouTube informed studio Sony TV that it had no plans to pursue a fourth season amid its shift to unscripted fare. While Netflix does not release traditional viewership data, a Nielsen report this week ranked the Karate Kid offshoot at the top of its streaming ranks for the show’s first full week of measurement (Aug. 31-Sept. 6) with more than 2 billion minutes watched.
Cobra Kai was even strong when it ran on YouTube. Out of the gate, the streamer said the pilot had already surpassed 20 million views less than a week since its launch, prompting a speedy season-two renewal. Funnily enough, Netflix was one of the original bidders on the series along with Hulu so it’s cool to see it get to Netflix in a bit of a full-circle moment. Cobra Kai sees Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprise their beloved roles as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence and finds, decades after their 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament bout, the middle-aged LaRusso and Lawrence becoming martial-arts rivals again.
