The way Cobra Kai treats its weakest characters has a subtle honesty to it. The winners of the tournaments, the fighters with the flawless technique and the dramatic backstories, are the ones that most shows prefer to focus on. However, over the course of six seasons, Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg created a San Fernando Valley dojo world that continued to make room for the children who were unable to keep up. More than anything else, that decision contributed to the show’s authenticity.
Bert and Stingray are the first two names that come to mind when you ask the Cobra Kai fandom who is at the bottom of the fighting roster. Bert is one of the tiniest and youngest pupils to enter the dojo; he is often used as comic relief, easily overwhelmed, and seldom given a chance to make real progress. A different kind of weakness is Stingray, the adult who joins Cobra Kai with obvious excitement and equally obvious coordination issues. He isn’t inexperienced or young. He’s just an adult with limited natural talent who stumbled into a world that expected more from him than he could provide. Observing him attempt has an almost poignant quality.
Kyler, on the other hand, adds intriguing complexity to the discussion. Due to his size, wrestling experience, and loud confidence, he often gives the impression that he is more dangerous than he actually is. However, Kyler is defeated repeatedly.
He is beaten early by Miguel. Hawk takes care of him. In season five, Demetri, who was the show’s designated punching bag for the better part of two seasons, finally overcomes him. It’s difficult to interpret Kyler’s path as an accident rather than a conscious creative decision. He is a symbol of what Kreese was really looking for: toughness on the outside rather than the inside.
Demetri’s storyline is intriguing because it challenges the notion of weakness. He begins as one of the least physically capable students in the entire program; he struggles to understand the fundamentals of karate long after his peers have moved on, is openly afraid of violence, and is made fun of by almost everyone around him. However, Cobra Kai uses him to illustrate a point that the show repeatedly reiterated throughout its six seasons: being weak at the beginning does not equate to being weak at the end. Demetri has gone farther than nearly every other member of the cast by the time he takes on Robby Keene at the All Valley Tournament. It’s not the ranking that matters, but the journey.
Perhaps the most annoying example of unrealized potential in the whole series is Aisha Robinson. In the first two seasons, she demonstrated genuine promise; she wasn’t exactly a natural athlete, but she was a dedicated worker who transformed her training into self-assurance. Years later, fans are still troubled by her sudden departure from the show. A different kind of weakness, one that belongs to the writers rather than the character, is that she was written out before the show could fully explore what she was capable of.
More than anything else, Cobra Kai’s weakest characters show that the show was never just about who could win a fight. It was about how people deal with the difference between their current selves and their desired selves. On paper, Stingray is ridiculous, but the show gave him a moment of real moral significance that was more significant than a dozen tournament victories. It’s easy to ignore Bert. Kyler’s self-image is never quite fulfilled. However, each of them contributes a little bit of texture to a world that would seem thinner without them.
In Cobra Kai, the least intriguing fighters are almost never the weakest. Most likely, that wasn’t an accident.
