Cobra Kai Just Did the CGI Miyagi Thing Again (And It Was Even Worse This Time)

When the second part of Cobra Kai‘s final season was released on Netflix late last year, fans were met with a controversial surprise: The one and only Mr. Miyagi. While Miyagi’s legacy has had a massive impact on the story of Cobra Kai, he has never actually been a part of the series, which makes sense considering Karate Kid star Pat Morita died back in 2005. An episode in Season 6 Part 2 saw a Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) confront a young Mr. Miyagi in a dream. That dream ended with an older Mr. Miyagi speaking to Daniel before punching him in the face.

The older Miyagi in that dream was a CGI re-animation of the late Morita’s face put onto another body. While it was certainly nice for some fans to see Miyagi again, the whole re-creation of dead performers through CGI or AI remains gross and, frankly, hard to look at. Watching Miyagi’s mouth move in Cobra Kai was every bit as off-putting as Peter Cushing in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

What helped Cobra Kai in that instance was the fact that the shot of Miyagi was very brief, with just one line of dialogue before the punch and a smash-cut to Daniel waking up in his bed. It was easy to write off and forget about. That’s why it’s so baffling that the show not only brought Miyagi back again in the final batch of episodes, but that the creative team chose to feature him in a much longer scene (with a lot more dialogue).

In the 13th episode of Cobra Kai Season 6, “Skeletons,” Daniel has another dream about Mr. Miyagi, this time playing back a dangerous encounter from The Karate Kid. We won’t get into much detail about the scene itself, but Miyagi essentially shows up to help Daniel fight off the attackers in his nightmare. After their victory, Daniel gets the chance to finally confront Miyagi about the mentor’s mysterious past that have had him questioning everything he thought he knew.

Let’s just ignore the fact that this whole scene is just a cop-out from a narrative and character perspective, as Daniel doesn’t actually have to work through his issues himself, he simply gets a dream version of his former sensei and friend to say it all for him. No growth was required from Daniel to find peace.

The actual fight in the scene works pretty well because it was shot and choreographed in a way that you didn’t see Miyagi’s face most of the time. But then, after the fight, the two have the chance to stand face-to-face, and it all falls apart. Like all of these CGI monstrosities, Miyagi’s mouth never exactly matches up with what his voice is saying. There’s one point where he says the word “always” and his mouth doesn’t even move.

It just looks bad, top to bottom. There’s really no excuse. And that’s without even considering the whole morality issue when it comes to these kinds of things. The creative team behind Cobra Kai did at least get everything cleared with Morita’s family before moving forward, but that doesn’t suddenly make it feel less icky.

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In these situations, it’s hard not to think about Jurassic Park, specifically one of the film’s most iconic lines of dialogue. While explaining to John Hammond why re-creating the dinosaurs was a terrible idea, Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm delivers a scathing take down of the motivations behind the entire operation. About how they cared more about finding out if they could accomplish something than whether or not it was even a good idea in the first place.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Sure, you could slap a beloved actor’s face into a scene of your TV show — 20 years after his death — just so you can say you got Miyagi and Daniel together one last time.

But should you?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as though anyone on Cobra Kai actually asked themselves that question.