YouTube’s attempt to become a streaming platform for its own productions, in the style of NetflixIt was quite short-lived. Although it began to take shape in 2016, it was not until 2018 that it began to gain some visibility, and at the beginning of 2020, we understand that after some results below expectations, Google decided to end YouTube Originals. And it is logical, it must be recognized that its contents never stood out, except for a few exceptions.
As we already told at that time, the most notable case in this regard is Cobra Kaia series that took over from the Karate Kid movie saga (those by Ralph Macchio and Noriyuki ‘Pat’ Morita, not the most recent The Karate Kid, starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan), one of the great cinema classics popcorn box from the eighties and that did so much good to many gyms that, overnight, saw the number of potential students interested in learning martial arts grow exponentially (I include myself on that list).
The announcement of the series was met with a mixture of surprise and skepticism.. Unfortunately, we are already used to seeing how, in an attempt to cash in on nostalgia, titles from that time have been retaken/versioned/restarted/etc., with catastrophic results, so, a priori, the proposal was a bit scary. . Big mistake, because we are faced with what could be the best audiovisual product of all the proposals that have wanted to bring to the present the “classics” of childhood and youth of those of us who were born between the sixties and the eighties.
At Netflix they were very aware of this and, as soon as the opportunity arose, they took over the first two seasons and decided to give them continuity, with the premieres of the third and fourth in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Always, it couldn’t be any other way, ending each season with a cliffhanger which leaves us fans waiting for a year to pass as quickly as possible to find out what happens next.
Is that also your case? Have you been waiting since last year for the premiere of the fifth season? Did Chozen’s appearance at the end of season four leave you with your nails in the wall or on the couch? Wondering what’s going to happen in the Valley, now that Terry Silver has taken John Kreese out of the way? And what has become of Miguel? What about Kreese in jail? What about Tory Nichols seeing what she saw? In this case, in addition to a trailer so that we can make our mouths, there is good, very good news… although perhaps with a trick.
For the premieres of the third and fourth seasons, Netflix opted for the Christmas holidays, in both cases premiering the entire season on the same day. With the fifth season of Cobra Kai, however, we will not have to wait that long, actually just a little more than three weeks, because The fifth season of Cobra Kai will premiere on Friday, September 9. Yes, you read that right, just over eight months after the debut of the fourth.
Now, why do I say that it can have a trick? Because Netflix, as we have been able to verify with its latest numbers, needs to retain the maximum possible number of users. And for this purpose, even if it goes against one of the hallmarks of the platform, we could find ourselves with a staggered premiere of the season. Either with the publication of an episode each week or, as they have done with Stranger Things, with two blocks and several individual episodes at the end. This is, for now, just a theory in which I hope I’m wrong.
In any case, it will be great not to have to wait for them to give us the grapes, literally, to return to a plot that, despite being somewhat naive, has managed to hook several generations.
