Cue the karate excitement! The Sekai Taikai is officially back on — but not without a little bureaucratic drama first in Cobra Kai season 6 episode 12. As the organizers fight it out in the boardroom (in one case, literally) to figure out exactly how they’re going to revive the global competition, and where, we see our young fighters hard at work training for the chance to become world champions.
This episode catches us up with Cobra Kai characters we haven’t seen since season 6 part 2, including Peyton List’s Tory Nichols, who has seemingly put her karate career behind her in the wake of the Barcelona tragedy. We also spend some quality time with Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto), who is dealing with his own uncertainties, but of the romantic sort.
On top of all of that, we officially have a new member of the Miyagi-Do family! Here’s everything that went down in Cobra Kai season 6 episode 12.
Will Chozen choose love?
Since the Sekai Taikai brouhaha, Chozen has kept busy gardening at Miyagi-Do and binging 16 episodes of Storage Wars daily. He’s seemingly trying to distract himself from thinking about Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita). Alas, he receives a letter directly from her apologizing for not returning his call, but also making clear she only cares for him as a friend.
Not wanting Chozen to drink away his despondence alone (remember the Long Island Iced Tea incident?), Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Amanda LaRusso (Courtney Henggeler) invite him to join them on a little day trip to the California wine country. In an effort to cheer the sensei up, Amanda invites her friend Winnie Taylor, played by Saved by the Bell alum Elizabeth Berkley. Winnie is a groovy gal and into practices like reiki and tarot, but Chozen is not impressed. (“Reiki is bulls***,” he harshly tells her.)
Things get worse when Winnie starts telling Amanda and Daniel how much things changed when her daughter went away to college, leaving Mama LaRusso worried about Samantha’s decision to forgo UCLA and go abroad for university. While she and Daniel start soothing their concerns with Cabernet, though, Chozen softens to Winnie and tells her about his rejection from Kumiko. They find common ground over their love of trashy reality television, including, yes, Storage Wars. (Chozen even lets her do a tarot reading on him, though a Death Card pull is a concerning development.) Their connection, however, is cut short when the group is interrupted by an important phone call — but more on that in a bit.
Is Tory really saying goodbye to karate?
With the Sekai Taikai back on, Miyagi-Do students like Samantha (Mary Mouser), Robby (Tanner Buchanan), Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) and Demetri (Gianni Decenzo) are giving it their all during training. The latter two even use their techy skills to create a new program — Fully Integrated Generative Haptic Technology, a.k.a. FIGHT — to help Robby get ready for his big battle against Axel (Patrick Luwis) from the Iron Dragons.
Not Tory, though — when Sam drops by to see whether she’d agree to train together, Nichols tells her she has quit the tournament. She never wants to put on a Cobra Kai gi again after what happened to Kwon (Brandon H. Lee). Her decision means that Samantha will immediately advance to the girls’ finals, pitting her against Zara (Rayna Vallandingham). She asks if Tory will still train her for the fight: “This might be your last time to kick me in the face,” LaRusso jokes. Tory agrees.
During their prep, the onetime rivals open up: Sam about wanting to go to Okinawa for a year-long program, and Tory about how her mother’s death threw her out of whack, leaving her to believe that Cobra Kai was her only option. Samantha sweetly assures her that the Miyagi-Do gang has her back, no matter what dojo logo is on her gi.
Welcome to the dojo family!
With their baby’s arrival imminent, Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) and Johnny (William Zabka) have been readying their household for the new family member. However, Carmen’s mother Rosa (Rose Bianco) informs Johnny she isn’t all too happy her grandchild is being born out of wedlock.
So, Johnny seeks out the counsel of his old Cobra Kai buddy, Bobby Brown (The Karate Kid alum Ron Thomas), who is now a pastor. The sensei tells him he had been planning to propose to Carmen when things were perfect and ready — after they won the Sekai Taikai, when he could use the championship prize money to buy them a new house, etc. “If you’re waiting for things to be perfect before taking the next step, your feet are going to be stiff,” Bobby tells him. “Take the leap. Just do it!”
Heading his advice, Johnny gets working on a DIY proposal: taking cooking classes, going tuxedo shopping, stealing blooms from strangers’ rose bushes, hiring a string quartet. But after all of that planning, the proposal ends up happening in a surprising setting — the hospital. When Johnny gets the call that Carmen is in labor, he (and pretty much everyone they know) races to the hospital to not only ask for her hand, but if she would marry him right then and there.
With Rosa, Miguel, Robby, Chozen and the LaRussos (who cut their wine trip short upon hearing the good news) all in attendance, and Pastor Bobby overseeing their nuptials, the newlyweds manage to get married right in the nick of time, before Carmen’s contractions get too much. Soon, we’ve got a brand-new member of Miyagi-Do: baby Laura, named after Johnny’s mother. Full circle.
All episodes of Cobra Kai season 6 are now available to stream on Netflix.