Cobra Kai EP Addresses Aisha's Absence From Season 3

The highly-anticipated third season of Cobra Kai finally arrived on Netflix last week, drawing huge viewership and critical acclaim once again, cementing itself as a bonafide streaming hit. The majority of the popular characters from the show returned to action in Season 3, and the new episodes even featured come back stories for stars of the original Karate Kid films. However, fans quickly noticed that one character they'd grown to love throughout the first two seasons of Cobra Kai was missing from every episode in Season 3. For whatever reason, Aisha was absent from Season 3.

Fans of Cobra Kai fell in love with Nichole Brown's Aisha in the first season of Cobra Kai, when she joined Johnny Lawrence's dojo to keep from being bullied. Aisha was in a tough spot, as her best friend Sam LaRusso started getting close to the girls that bullied her. Like the other kids on the show, Aisha spent two seasons growing and honing in her karate skills, but she was nowhere to be found in the new installment.. It was briefly mentioned at the beginning of Season 3 that Aisha's parents sent her to a private school after the big fight that put Miguel in the hospital. After that, however, she wasn't mentioned again.

Does this mean that Aisha is no longer a part of the Cobra Kai series? That wouldn't really make sense, given how big of a character she was for the first two seasons, and how little attention was paid to her exit. According to Cobra Kai co-creator and executive producer Hayden Schlossberg, fans of Aisha shouldn't go into panic mode just yet.

"Well we don't want to get too much into detail about why we do certain things. If it is going to effect things in the future, that would be a spoiler," Schlossberg told ComicBook.com. "Except to say, if a character that's one of our favorite characters you've ever created and it's tricky when you're putting this season together and figuring out, what's going to make it, what's not. What we will say is, as you've seen in season three, characters who maybe you thought were no longer a part of the story, do come back and play a role. Just using Tyler as an example. And so, people who want to see Aisha again, I think that's how we would respond to that, without giving anything away."

Aisha was the most glaring absence from Season 3, but she wasn't the only one who didn't make it back. Stingray, the oldest student at Cobra Kai, was also missing from the new season. This made a lot more sense to fans, though, seeing as how the character is played by in-demand actor Paul Walter Hauser. Stingray also didn't have the kind of arc or significance to the overall narrative that Aisha did in the first two seasons.

Were you disappointed not to see Aisha in Cobra Kai Season 3? Do you hope to see her return for future installments? Let us know in the comments!