The forthcoming final season of Cobra Kai will end epically, with the Karate Kid sequel series getting an extended grand finale. The final chapter will consist of a massive 15 episodes, an increase of 5 from its usual 10-episode seasons, but there's a catch: It will be released in three parts.

The first batch of episodes will land on Netflix on July 18, the next 5 episodes will arrive on November 28, and the final part will land sometime next year. Launching on YouTube Red (remember that?) in 2018, Cobra Kai picks up with Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) 34 years on from his defeat at the Hill Valley Karate Championship, down on his luck and circling the drain a chance encounter with a bullied teen sees Johnny reopen the doors of the very place he learnt karate, the Cobra Kai Dojo. 

Naturally, once former Hill Valley Champ turned car dealership owner Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) learns of this, their decades-old feud gets reawakened. 

Plenty of revivals, reboots, and legacy sequels miss the mark, but Cobra Kai managed to hit all the right beats with its mix of nostalgia and drama; this is how you bring something back without changing the core of what it was always about. We've had some unexpected returns of loads of former Karate Kid stars, Martin Kove (John Kreese), Thomas Ian Griffith (Terry Silver), Yuji Okumoto (Choozen), and Elizabeth Shue (Ali Mills). Could we finally get a cameo from Hilary Swank's Julie Pierce from The Next Karate Kid? We can only hope.

The unexpected delay is most likely due to the recent shift in the release date for the new Karate Kid movie, which will see Ralph Macchio join forces with Jackie Chan's Mr Han (from the 2010 reboot). Jonathan Entwistle directs the as-yet-untitled film, which, rather oddly, has no involvement from Cobra Kai creators/showrunners Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg. 

Cobra Kai: The Final Season Part 1 arrives on Netflix on July 18.