We live in a time where intellectual properties have apparently become like comic book heroes, and it is not Uncle Ben, but apparently only Firefly that stays dead. The latest beloved cultural icon to get a revival in 2018 is The Karate Kid, this time in the form of a TV show on YouTube Red – and to the surprise of absolutely everyone, it got both positive reviews and was successful enough to get a second season.

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It was like the universe aligned in order to make this show exist: Our newfound obsession with 80’s nostalgia through streaming shows; Ralph Macchio’s acceptance of his iconic role and recent tour of comic conventions; William Zabka appearing as himself on How I Met Your Mother sparking hot takes on why Daniel LaRusso is actually the bully and Johnny a misunderstood hero. Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald created a show that feels just like watching the original 1984 movie, yet unlike anything you’ve seen before.Right from the start of the first episode, the creators trick us with nostalgia before revealing the actual plot of the show. First, they trick us into thinking Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence have changed after 30 years. Johnny is living in a dump, with no job, friends, and estranged from his ex-wife and son. Meanwhile, Daniel is married, has a family and is the king of car dealerships in the Valley. Yet Cobra Kai finds the balance between repeating the old story and giving us something completely different by offering us new stories, but with the same tone of the original movie.The legacy characters are in new situations, but they are still the same people. Johnny, who was the rich kid in the original, is now a loser who thinks the world owes him an apology even when he’s clearly in the wrong. He’s a well-intentioned idiot still stuck in the 80’s, a misogynistic, homophobic jerk with no idea that 30 years have gone by. On the other hand, Daniel is apparently living the life he never had before, but he's based his entire public persona around his teenager self who was good at karate – his tagline being “We kick the competition.” This is a show about two men choking on the lessons taught to them by 80’s culture. Both Daniel and Johnny are stuck in a bygone era, while Johnny’s struggles led him to blame the world for all his wrongdoings, Daniel’s success blinded him to his faults.It is clear that for the characters we know and love, nostalgia is a dangerous drug that slowly eats away at you. Like the stereotype of people who peaked in high school, Johnny and Daniel live waiting to get their next fix of memorabilia or praise that takes them back to their golden years for just a few more minutes before the cruel reality of time hits them in the face. Johnny has never recovered from the fact that a skinny kid from New Jersey took his girl and title from him, and even Daniel is obsessively looking at pictures of his high school ex-girlfriend on Facebook despite having a beautiful wife that’s way smarter than anyone on the show. A similar thing happens in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where the only thing Han Solo changed about himself after 30 years is that he finally got to use Chewbacca’s bowcaster. Solo is still the same scoundrel we remember, and that’s his greatest fault – that he had tried to replicate his golden years even 3 decades later.While it is fun to see old characters, Cobra Kai wastes no time introducing the new generation, who will make the same mistakes as their predecessors. Johnny finds a new shot at redemption (and at making a few bucks) in the form of Miguel, a teenage kid that brings out the Grand Torino in Johnny. He will decide to help the kid defend himself against bullies and train him in the art of karate faster than you can say “Get him a body bag!”If I may return to the Force Awakens analogy, Cobra Kai follows that space opera’s approach to nostalgia – giving the audience new characters and stories, but keeping the tone of the original so that they feel fresh but very familiar. We see the rise of a new Johnny, but it makes sense as the natural arc for that character that echoes the movie’s “No such thing as bad student, only bad teacher” mantra. Just like The Force Awakens was the entry point that sold us on the new characters by making them feel familiar before The Last Jedi went in an entirely different direction, so too can Cobra Kai now focus on the new stories and characters that are as good as Daniel vs Johnny. The 1984 movie echoes throughout the series, but it is used to connect the characters to a shared universe instead of just to copy what came before (even if some of the references are a bit too heavy-handed - like going to Golf ‘n Stuff).Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One featured references to everything you could possibly imagine, and it used nostalgia as its greatest (and only) weapon to attract viewers. The movie features a world where nostalgia means escapism and salvation from the horrors of a dystopian society. The main character in the movie literally becomes the head of the biggest company in the world by knowing a lot of pop-culture trivia. By trying to tell people “hey, your knowledge and passion for pop-culture isn’t a bad thing,” the movie glorifies keeping your head in the past. Cobra Kai uses nostalgia as a warning. From the old characters not being able to move on and focus on the present, to new characters making the exact same mistakes as their predecessors, Cobra Kai shows at every opportunity that dwelling on the past can be a poison.If Hollywood is going to keep taking old shows and movies and reviving them with the same actors, maybe they should take a look at how Cobra Kai did it. Now the only question is, when is Elisabeth Shue coming back?