How Does ‘Karate Kid: Legends’ Tie to the Original and ‘Cobra Kai’?

Karate Kid: Legends, the sixth franchise installment (now in cinemas), unites the previously separate timelines of the original series (including Netflix’s Cobra Kai) as well as the heretofore standalone 2010 remake, in which Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han succeeded the late Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi. For the first time since 1989’s The Karate Kid III, Ralph Macchio returns to the big screen as original protagonist Daniel LaRusso. While LaRusso’s storyline has been followed up in Cobra Kai, it’s the first time since the remake that Chan's character has returned to the universe. The timelines which converge in Karate Kid: Legends aren’t entirely straightforward, which has led to some questions about how exactly the legacy sequel ties into Cobra Kai and the rest of the franchise.

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When does Karate Kid: Legends take place in relation to Cobra Kai?

Legends is set three years after the events depicted in the final season of Cobra Kai, which dropped in February on Netflix. "Chronologically, [Karate Kid: Legends] was always set about three years after the events of Cobra Kai,” Macchio told The Hollywood Reporter. “Cobra Kai started in 2018, and so the kids on that show would be in their third year of college [during Karate Kid: Legends].”

How does Karate Kid: Legends tie into Cobra Kai?

Macchio described Legends as “its own ecosystem in the grand universe” of the Karate Kid/Cobra Kai franchise. It introduces new characters and tells a story completely separate from that of Cobra Kai, with only Macchio and one other cast member returning for Legends. LaRusso enters the film midway through, when Mr. Han travels to California to implore the original karate kid to help him train his great-nephew, Li (Ben Wang). LaRusso has put the events of Cobra Kai behind him and is now living a much more Miyagi-esque life in a dojo designed after that of his mentor.

“In Karate Kid: Legends, we find him being far more Miyagi in his sensibilities and his grounded wisdom,” Macchio explained to THR. “In Cobra Kai, it was designed that the more knee-jerk and up-in-Johnny’s-face he was, the better it was to service Johnny Lawrence’s redemption. So I’d be like, ‘Okay, but when do we land in Miyagi-land?’ That is where I thought LaRusso would end up with all his wisdom from his mentor, a very grounded mother, a good life, a good business, and a good wife.”

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How does Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han fit into the original universe?

Mr. Han was introduced in the 2010 remake, The Karate Kid, as a successor to Mr. Miyagi, who teaches a different-but-related form of martial arts. The Han family was introduced by name only in The Karate Kid II (1986), a scene which serves as the opening to Legends (with some added comic book animation for good measure).

The legend goes as such: In 1625, Shimpo Miyagi—Mr. Miyagi’s fisherman ancestor—sailed from Okinawa and became lost at sea. He eventually washed up on the shore of China, where he was taken in and taught kung fu by the Han family. When Miyagi returned to Japan, he established the Miyagi-Do school, combining the two families’s specialized forms of martial arts. A line delivered by Mr. Han in Legends explains that the Miyagi and Han teachings were two branches of the same tree. Some more persistent fan theories posit that Mr. Han and Mr. Miyagi are distant relatives, but there’s no evidence (so far) to support that.

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Is Ralph Macchio the only Cobra Kai cast member to return for Legends?

Legends mostly bypasses the events and characters of Cobra Kai in favor of Li and Han’s storyline, which means Macchio is the only returning actor in a lead role. However, there is one well-placed cameo in the post-credits scene, which finds LaRusso back at his dojo after Li’s grand battle. Han has sent LaRusso a pizza from New York (along with a shipping bill for $11,000), which LaRusso takes inside and shares with William Zabka’s Johnny, his Karate Kid bully turned Cobra Kai mentee.

The impromptu delivery gives Johnny an idea for his and LaRusso’s next business, a pizza restaurant called Miyagi-Dough. Zabka’s cameo is more of an Easter egg than anything else, a final joke on which to end the movie and perhaps a promise of where the franchise will go if Legends gets a sequel.

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Karate Kid: Legends is now in cinemas.

Related: How 'Cobra Kai' Brought Back a Legendary Deceased ‘Karate Kid’ Actor