How the Jump to Netflix Kicked ‘Cobra Kai’ Into a Higher Gear

As “Cobra Kai” comes to an end after a six-season run and 65 episodes, it stands as one of the most successful examples of the “Netflix bump,” where the power of the leading streaming service’s platform gave a series a new lease on life and propelled it into the cultural zeitgeist.

Back when the series made its debut, “Cobra Kai” — a legacy sequel to the 1984 hit “The Karate Kid” that explored the life of the original film’s villain Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) — served as one of the crown jewels in YouTube’s push into original content via YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red). Despite toiling in relative obscurity behind the subscription tier of the new service, the show premiered to quite a bit of success and positive reviews in 2018, garnering 50 million views in its first five months and earning a Season 2 renewal just six days after its launch.

“It felt like a hit at that time to us just because you’d see the numbers,” showrunner Jon Hurwitz told TheWrap. “We saw the fan reaction and there was just a passionate fandom already for the series. But in our everyday lives Josh [Heald] and I are both parents, and we’d be at a school event and like none of our kids’ friends were watching the show. None of their parents were watching the show. It was really just like dedicated to these people online.”

After the show premiered, YouTube began shifting priorities for original content from scripted to unscripted. In the run up to Season 2, YouTube opted to move “Cobra Kai’s” first season in front of its paywall with new episodes of the sophomore series following suit weekly. Not long after that, YouTube announced they would not be continuing the series — despite work having already begun on a third season — so the showrunners started shopping it around.

“We knew YouTube was stopping making original content, and we were desperate to get it over to Netflix,” Hurwitz said. “We knew there were a bunch of different places that were interested, but from the beginning we always felt this was a Netflix show. Once it landed over there we were like, ‘Okay, now we’ll see,’ because we felt like we had something that people loved but not enough people had seen. And it was instantaneous.”

Netflix bought the streaming rights to “Cobra Kai” in June 2020 — a few months after much of the world was shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic — and the first two seasons landed in late August. The “Netflix bump” was evident immediately, as demand for the show skyrocketed 110%, according to data from Parrot Analytics.

While the already produced episodes began to gain traction, the show also had an entire third season completed and ready for release at a time where streamers were running low on new content due to COVID restrictions. The third season debuted in 2021 and earned an Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy nomination later that year. From there, “Cobrai Kai” was off to the races on the streamer for the following three seasons.

According to Nielsen, the series has ranked in the Netflix Top 10 22 times since it joined the streamer in 2020 and cracked the Netflix Top 10 for originals 37 times. In 2024 alone, the series accumulated 8.5 billion viewing minutes.

Although “Cobra Kai” represents one of the biggest “Netflix bump” examples, it’s hardly alone. The streamer has always been in the business of snapping up shows, some discarded by other channels and services, including Fox’s “Lucifer,” “ABC’s “Designated Survivor,” NBC’s “Manifest” and Lifetime’s “You” — which also concludes its run in 2025 — that all enjoyed their own “Netflix bump” success stories.

It isn’t just canceled shows that reap the rewards of having a few seasons dropped on the streamer either. Hurwitz recalled grabbing lunch with fellow “Cobra Kai” showrunner Hayden Schlossberg and Eugene Levy — who the two had worked with on “American Reunion.” As the pair were looking for a new home for the series, Levy told them the show he was making with his son, “Schitt’s Creek,” just landed on Netflix and was enjoying its own moment in the sun.

“Right before the pandemic we had lunch with Eugene, and we were talking about how we were shopping ‘Cobra Kai’ around, and he was saying how they made four seasons of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and had been on Pop TV and were playing in Canada,” Hurwitz said. “He said the moment it went on Netflix – he remembered it went on Netflix on like a Thursday – and like two days later he was at the airport with his son Dan [Levy], and he’s like, ‘Suddenly my son Dan is giantly famous, like instantaneously.'”

“It felt the same way with ‘Cobra Kai,’ where just the influx of calls and love for the show and everyone in our world suddenly had seen it,” Hurwitz said. “It was truly amazing.”

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