‘Cobra Kai’ Season 6 Part 2: Kwon’s Death Explained

SPOILER ALERT: This article discusses plot details from the season 6 part 2 finale of “Cobra Kai” now streaming on Netflix.

Cobra Kai never dies. Until its students do.

The final season of Netflix’s hit dramedy “Cobra Kai,” itself a spinoff of the 1980s “Karate Kid” series, is divided into three installments. Part 1 was released on July 18th, with Part 2 now streaming. Part 3 is coming in early 2025.

This second chapter of the final season brings the Miyagi-Do dojo to Barcelona for an elite international karate tournament known as Sekai Taikai. The season 6, part 2 finale, an episode aptly titled “Eunjangdo” — and you’ll see why — features a title match between Miyagi-Do’s Robby Keene (Tanner Buchanan) and the Iron Dragons dojo’s Axel Kovacevic (Patrick Luwis).

Axel, brooding and muscular in his 6’3″ frame, towers over Robby as the match begins. Miyagi-Do’s captain quickly tires himself out through a series of attempts that prove futile against Axel’s formidable defense. At that point, it takes a subtle glance from the latter’s violent sensei (Lewis Tan) to send Axel on the attack. The fighter repeatedly punches Robby, drawing blood from a blow to the mouth. When Axel throws him off the competition mat, Robby comes face to face with Cobra Kai rival Kwon Jae-Sung (Brandon H. Lee). Kwon hits him with a quick jab and Robby’s Miyagi-Do teammate Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña) quickly takes exception. Miguel crosses the mat to confront Kwon as Axel slams him to the ground. Within seconds, Robby and Miguel stand up to their competition.

Before the Sekai Taikai host can put an end to this confrontation, he is knocked unconscious by a disgruntled sensei whose team was banned for drug use. From there, the momentum of the karate fight coalesces into the kind of extended, adrenalized fight sequence that has become a “Cobra Kai” staple.

Because the tournament qualifies as an international sporting event, this ensuing brawl is streamed live for fans globally, including Miyagi-Do’s loved ones back in the San Fernando Valley. The match reaches a climax when Kwon and Axel are pushed into a physical altercation. The “Iron Dragons” fighter kicks Kwon into the tournament cameraman and the show switches to a vertical vantage point of Kwon’s bleeding face to reflect the camera’s fall to the floor. Kwon lets out a frustrated scream. Then he laughs. He has discovered what he believes is his key to victory: an Eunjangdo knife dropped by his Cobra Kai sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove) amid the chaos.

Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) can see the scene unfolding before it happens. He rushes over to stop Kwon and the camera cuts to a karate match between Kreese, Johnny Lawerence (William Zabka) and Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith). As the three antagonists of the original “Karate Kid” series prepare to face off, a harrowing scream is heard. And everyone stops fighting.

The texture of sound design shapes from a dramatic, foreboding crescendo to something somber and ethereal, a few seconds of layered music composition punctuated by the dialogue “That’s a lot of blood”, and then the reveal of an eunjangdo knife that inserted itself into Kwon’s Torso.

“We’re setting up Kwon to be the new big bad antagonist going into this other block,” says series co-creator Hayden Schlossberg Black in a conversation with co-creators and showrunners Jon Hurwitz and Josh Heald. “For him to be killed by another opponent is a surprise we were looking forward to.”

Hurwitz contextualizes Kwon’s death as a particularly seminal moment because audiences have not previously seen a visceral death on screen in the series or in any of the “Karate Kid” films. He adds that the “Cobra Kai” writers created a narrative setup for Kwon’s death in Part 1 through the story of Daniel discovering that Mr. Miyagi killed his opponent at Sekai Taikai decades earlier.

“Kwon became this powder keg of a character that really got us excited in the writers’ room,” says Heald.

Hurwitz adds that the “Strike Hard, Strike Fast, No Mercy” philosophy that permeates Cobra Kai by Kreese injected a kind of emotional poison into Kwon’s psyche.

Kwon, Hurwitz explains, is a broken person who so desperately wants to prove himself as the best. After losing to Robby during the tournament, he struggles to deal with his inner anger. His sensei and mentor, in turn, give him the wrong message: to show no mercy.

“Kreese is more vengeful than ever, using Kwon as this ultimate weapon,” says Schlossberg. “It ends with this battle between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla that all the students are involved in. It created an opportunity for us to have Kreese see the results of some of his actions. …to see one of his students get killed with the knife he brought there.”

Season 6, Part 1 depicted the backstory of the eunjangdo knife that a younger Kreese acquired years earlier during a perilous journey to prove himself to his former sensei, Master Kim (CS Lee). The weapon, says Heald, is about much more than a knife.

The co-creator talks about how eunjangdo takes the last remnants of love for Johnny that Kreese still possesses. It is this empathy, Heald explains, that stands in the way of him becoming the ruthless creature he was once able to mold himself into under Master Kim’s tutelage.

“The knife represents the Krees’ last remnant of humanity,” says Heald. “It’s a turning point — does it send him further down the spiral or does it create an opportunity for change? That’s a big question that we want people to chew on at the end of these five episodes.”