Netflix’s new hit series “Cobra Kai” has been making its rounds, proving to be a smashing success among audiences both old enough to remember the original “Karate Kid,” as well as younger viewers tuning into the franchise for the first time.
However, when “Cobra Kai” first aired on YouTube Red back in 2018, there was no guarantee that it would become the international success that it is. In fact, numerous members of both the cast and production team were “stunned” by what the show would become.
Ralph Macchio Had ‘Low Expectations’ For the Series
Shortly after the release of season 3, “Cobra Kai” star Ralph Macchio spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about his thoughts on what the show might become before the production of the first season had started. “It’s exceeded my expectations, he said, “not that I didn’t feel we were making something great.”
He continued to say that “The low expectations helped us, I think,” due to the public perception ahead of time that the show was not a very original idea. He explained, “The press and the media was like, ‘OK, they’re doing this now. Sure, no one has any original ideas, why not do this?’ So that was a good thing for us.”
In a separate interview in May 2018, shortly after the release of season 1 on YouTube Red, co-creators Hayden Schlossberg and Jon Hurwitz sat down with CNBC to discuss the newfound popularity of the series. “It’s been unbelievable, we’ve all been stunned,” said Hurwitz, adding that the first episode already had over 20 million views on YouTube within a week of release.
Schlossberg said that they approached creating the show “as fans” who wanted it to feel like “a true continuation” of “The Karate Kid.” “It tells a story for today’s audience,” he continued, “but there’s definitely some callbacks, so if you’re a fan of the original movie you’ll find those moments throughout the first season.”
“Cobra Kai’s” Success Is Breaking Ratings Records
Getty“Cobra Kai” stars Ralph Macchio (center) and William Zabka (second from left), along with creators (L-R) Hayden Schlossberg, Jon Hurwitz and Josh Heald attend an early screening of the show in 2018.
Although the positive public reception of “Cobra Kai” has been made clear, with three major People’s Choice Award nominations this year alone, Netflix has also released viewing figures for the show, a move that is somewhat unusual for the platform.
According to MovieWeb, after the move from YouTube to Netflix in August 2020, seasons 1 and 2 became the most-viewed show on the entire platform. This amounted to around 50 million unique viewers in its first 28 days on the platform, per The Hollywood Reporter.
After season 3, the first Netflix-original “Cobra Kai” season, was released on January 1, 2021, it surpassed Netflix’s “Bridgerton” in terms of total numbers of minutes viewed of any streaming show. Nielsen’s rankings of streaming shows reveal 2.1 billion minutes of “Cobra Kai” were viewed between January 4-10, compared to Bridgerton’s 1.67 billion minutes, as The Hollywood Reporter reported. By the end of Netflix’s first quarter in April 2021, Netflix reported that season 3 had reached 45 million unique viewers, making it among Netflix’s highest rated shows.
While CNN suggests that the success of the show is due to its move to Netflix, the series’ surge of popularity within days of its release on YouTube Red might say otherwise. The Guardian, in an article from January 2021, says that much of the credit goes to “the underdog and protagonist” Johnny Lawrence, explaining that the character is “a fantastic comic creation – a wildly inappropriate and obnoxious poster boy for arrested development.” It adds that the “comic interplay” between the “80s dinosaur” and his students calling him out on his curmudgeonly nature adds to the show’s success. It explains:
Gen X and Gen Z working to balance each other out. This is the true brilliance of the series, and the key to its success – deftly managing not to take itself too seriously but seriously enough for us to really care about the characters.
The show’s creators, for their part, believe a key element to the show’s success is rooted in the vast range of audience they can pull in: a relatable cast of younger characters for teenage viewers, and the nostalgia factor for older viewers who want to return to the “Karate Kid” franchise – a nostalgia factor which the creators say includes themselves. Hurwitz expounded on this in the 2018 CNBC interview:
For us the audience is basically everyone. Obviously there’s the crowd like us who fell in love with Daniel and Johnny and Mr. Miyagi back in the day, and there’s definitely plenty on the show for them, but there’s a whole new cast of teenage characters that we’re hoping people are gonna fall in love with the same way… Thus far the reaciont has been amazing… It’s not just people in our age bracket, but teenagers have been really into the show as well.
Hurwitz, Schlossberg, and fellow co-creator Josh Heald were all born in 1977 and 1978, meaning they fell perfectly into the target demographic of young children and tweens that the “Karate Kid” films catered to. Now, “Cobra Kai” is pulling a whole new generation of young fans into the beloved “Miyagi-verse.”
Cobra Kai has been renewed for at least two more seasons. Season 4 will be released on Netflix on December 31.
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