[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Cobra Kai Season 4.]Mary Mouser’s Samantha LaRusso takes an interesting turn in Cobra Kai Season 4. After struggling to cope with the trauma of the Season 2 school fight throughout much of Season 3, Sam’s pushing back strong.
Not only does Sam take every opportunity she gets to push Tory’s (Peyton List) buttons, but she also refuses to let her own father box her into Miyagi-Do karate and Miyagi-Do karate alone. Sam think its best to study both Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang in order to beat Cobra Kai, and if she’s got to go behind Daniel’s (Ralph Macchio) back to study with Johnny (William Zabka), she’s going to do so. However, even after finding success with the combined karate styles and finally getting Daniel and Johnny to work together, Sam still loses the All Valley championship to Tory. Yes, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) rigged the fight for Tory, but Sam doesn’t know that (yet).
After the match, a defeated Sam tells her dad, “We did the right thing and we still didn’t win.” She seemed totally crushed when she walks off, begging the question, what’s Sam’s outlook on karate now? After all that work didn’t pay off, has she lost all hope? I posed that question to Mouser during our Cobra Kai Season 4 chat. She began:
“I don’t think it’s lost all hope … I feel like all of us throughout Season 4, we all start from a place ending Season 3 and going into Season 4 of like, ‘Okay, all questions will be answered by this All Valley. We’ll get there.’ It’s almost like how it actually feels when we’re filming where it’s like, it felt far away. When we started Episode 1, Episode 10, the idea of the All Valley was this big concept that we all knew the whole season was based on, but it seemed like years away. It seemed like we had plenty of time, and then it just sped up on us.”
When the time came to tackle the All Valley material, Mouser found Sam in a mighty relatable headspace. Here’s how she put it:
“I almost feel like Samantha’s start, her goal was like, ‘Yeah, get Daniel and Johnny to work together and that will be the answer.’ And then it’s almost like that thing of getting caught in the trap — and I’ve done this in my life so many times — of the wanting and, ‘If I want this thing, once I get that thing it will fix all my problems. All I want’s cake right now or if my skin cleared up,’ you know what I mean?”
Yes, losing the All Valley is clearly a crushing blow to Sam and co., but Mouser does see a silver lining in how the loss change’s Sam’s perspective on the situation and how it highlights what’s really important.
“You always think, ‘If this thing happens I will have all the answers,’ and I feel like in a way they finally get it where, yeah, she gets the thing that she’s been working towards, which was [getting] Daniel and Johnny to work together, but the ultimate goal was beyond that and it was safety for the valley, the soul of the valley, having a family and safety and belonging and all these things that she hasn’t had for so long. So I feel like she’s not lost hope because of it, but it’s almost like, finally taking a step back and seeing what the bigger picture was all along and it’s like, ‘Yes, I got this small victory, but I lost the war.’”
Now that’s a headspace I can’t wait to explore more in Cobra Kai Season 5! While we wait to see how Sam’s journey progresses from here, be sure to catch my full conversation with Mouser and her Cobra Kai co-stars Peyton List and Tanner Buchanan in the video at the top of this article.