How Many Seasons of Cobra Kai Are There — And Was the Ending Worth the Wait?

For six seasons, Cobra Kai ran. The short answer is that. However, there’s something intriguing about how it got there: it began on a platform that most people weren’t even paying for, made its way to Netflix, and concluded on February 13, 2025, with a finale that, at least for the majority of fans, felt like something truly earned.

On May 2, 2018, the program debuted on YouTube Red. Not the most esteemed streaming address, exactly. In its first 24 hours, the first episode received 5.4 million views, which surprised many and attracted some attention. It became evident that the season 1 premiere was more than just nostalgia for those who remembered Ralph Macchio from their early years when it reached 50 million views on YouTube before season 2. It was genuinely effective in some way.

Seasons 1 and 2, each with ten episodes, were available on YouTube Premium. The show then moved to Netflix in 2020 because the creators wanted a platform that would continue the plot and YouTube was not interested in a fourth season. When Season 3 debuted on January 1, 2021, 50 million Netflix households had viewed Season 1 in just four weeks. That September, it rose to the top of Netflix’s streaming list. It was difficult to dispute the numbers.

For a while, the beat from Netflix was steady. There will be ten episodes in each of the following seasons: season 3 in January 2021, season 4 on December 31, 2021, and season 5 in September 2022. During season three, the show received a nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series at the Primetime Emmy Awards, which felt like a tiny confirmation of what many people had been quietly saying: this thing is actually pretty good. Season 5’s Rotten Tomatoes rating of 98% was the highest of its run.

Early in 2023, the sixth and final season was revealed. Even though a seventh season might have been negotiated, it was always going to end at six because the creators had apparently planned that out fairly early. After the labor disputes in Hollywood in 2023, production resumed on January 1, 2024. Five episodes of the final season were released in July 2024, five more in November 2024, and the final five on February 13, 2025. The unconventional release format appeared to split viewers, but not permanently.

Over the course of those six seasons, Cobra Kai produced 65 episodes. With 15 episodes instead of 10 in the final season, the creators had more time to wrap up a rather complex web of storylines involving dojos, family dynamics, long-standing rivalries, and karate tournaments. For a show that many people wrote off as a nostalgic cash-grab in 2018, the overall Rotten Tomatoes approval rating for all six seasons is 94%, which is a truly impressive figure.

It’s difficult to ignore how much of the show’s success stemmed from the choice to treat the characters seriously as opposed to merely winking at the camera. Thirty-three years after the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, the original idea of reuniting with Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso could have taken a much more relaxed turn. Rather, the writers spent six seasons examining the true identity of the antagonist, a question that seemed to have been circulating in popular culture since the film’s release. According to a 2013 episode of How I Met Your Mother, Johnny was the true hero. The same argument was made in a 2007 music video. That argument became a series thanks to Cobra Kai.

It’s probably still unclear if everyone was satisfied with the conclusion. Seldom do finales. However, by almost all standards, six seasons, 65 episodes, two streaming platforms, and a critical approval rating that remained in the 90s for the majority of its run constitute a complete story. It’s difficult to draw any conclusions from that result for a sequel to an 80s film that debuted on a paid YouTube channel.