Cobra Kaiintroduced new villains in the final season of the show, including Zara Malik (Rayna Vallandingham), the self-professed Queen of Karate. The series, which began as a sequel series to theKarate Kidmovies, has done a great job at building on the world created by the movies as well as bringing in new characters and bringing the Karate Kid teachings to a new generation. The series sees Daniel Russo (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) reunited decades after theirKarate Kidrivalry, and initially, that rivalry is still there.
There are so many rivalries in the show among the new generation and the old, and each of those rivalries is different than the others. What the show is sorely lacking among a lot of those conflicts, however, is female characters. When Zara is brought in late in the show, she briefly adds another female antagonist to the mix and provides a great addition to the Sekai Taikai episodes.
Who Is Zara Malik
Zara Malik Is An Impressive Fighter
The final season ofCobra Kaiwas released in three parts on Netflix. The second part introduced a lot of new characters courtesy of the Sekai Taikai. A worldwide tournament that narrowed down to two final teams, there was not a lot of focus given to every team. Due to the nature of the show, Miyagi-do and Cobra Kai, of course, get the bulk of the tournament storyline. Introduced asthe team to beat, however, isthe Iron Dragons, which is where Zara comes in as a new player.
Zara is their star female fighter, making her the rival to Sam (Mary Mouser) and Tory (Peyton List) to close out the series.Zara is a formidable fighter. She takes down opponents twice her size, both male and female, in the early rounds of the tournament. She is light on her feet and uses a combination of gymnastics and hits to keep her opponents on the offensive.
It’s made abundantly clear that the Iron Dragons know who their best fighters are as well. The entire team bows out during what is meant to be a team round to allow Zara and Axel (Patrick Luwis) to fight the other team alone. They dominate the fight. While Axel gets a lot of the attention because of the way he is encouraged to fight,Zara is actually the better fighterof the two, likely due in part to Vallandingham being the most seasoned martial artist of the cast.
Vallandingham was the youngest Taekwondo black belt to become a tournament champion at just eight years old. She is a 13-time world champion.
Zara is positioned to be the new rival for the main female characters of the series. Sam, however, is not intimidated by Zara, and actually exits the tournament completely as she realizes as much as she loves karate, it is not what her future is about. Zara then gets to focus a lot of her energy on making Tory miserable and getting inside her head before and during matches.Zara is objectively the worst.
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How Zara Compares To Other Cobra Kai Villains
Zara Does Not Really Have To Play Dirty
Nearly all of thevillains inCobra Kaiare essentially bullies. They take the things that make their opponents unique or the things their opponents care about, and they tear them down to prop themselves up. They name-call off the mat, and then they fight dirty on the mat.It’s fairly easy to see how the conflicts come up throughout the show, because many of the villains are so full of anger and believe themselves to be superior to those around them.
Trash talk is one thing, but Zara’s karate is pure.
Zara’s villainy is more insidious because, unlike the other villains in the series, she does not need to fight dirty on the mat.She prefers to stick to the psychological tactics that the other antagonists use when not in a karate match. Zara talks up women on a live-stream in front of Sam and Devon (Oona O’Brien), and as soon as it ends, derides the karate of all of the other women in the tournament. She allows Tory to think that she slept with Robby (Tanner Buchanan) to mess with her head.
On the mat, however, Zara plays by the rules. Wolf never has to get her to break someone’s leg. She never resorts to bending or breaking the rules to be the winner. Trash talk is one thing, but Zara’s karate is pure.Her insults and mind games are seemingly a fun game for her instead of necessary to win a match.
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Why Zara’s Villainy Is So Unique
Zara Is A Uniquely Feminine Villain
Zara’s villainy is unique to the other antagonists in the show becauseher tactics are also uniquely feminine. That is to say, Zara uses the kind of methods that mean girls in high school would use rather than competitors in an elite sports competition, or for that matter, garden variety bullies. From the moment Zara enters the series, the audience can see the kind of character they’re in for, and her tactics make us hate her.Zara is one of the worst women in the show, but also one of the best short-term villains.
Zara is a social media influencer whose brand relies on her being a “girl’s girl.”On her platforms, she livestreams her events, talks up the competition, and advocates for the importance of women in sports. While she does all of that on camera, as soon as she stops pointing her phone at herself, she is discussing how bad the techniques of her competitors are.
Rather than being a girl’s girl in reality and respecting boundaries, she glues herself to Robby’s side while he gets drunk when missing Tory, and takes him back to her hotel room. While nothing actually happens between them, she allows both Robby and Tory to initially think that something did. It gets in Tory’s head so badly that she allows her emotions to rule her fights and is not able to focus as well.
This actually is similar to Yasmine (Annalisa Cochrane) in the early seasons of the show, who was not involved in the karate aspects of the series. She is popular and pretty and tends to get away with just about everything at school. She targetsSam’s friend Aisha (Nichole Brown)with insults and makes her feel small. Once Aisha stands up to her once, however, that storyline is over. Zara is not the kind of person who backs down from a fight, unlike Yasmine, who sees the error of her ways and her role in the series is minimized after that.
Whereas Yasmine’s mean girl ways are limited to mostly name-calling, Zara is more calculated, targeting the insecurities in Tory’s relationships with other people. Tory has a very difficult time getting close to or trusting people, and Zara briefly shatters the trust Tory has in Robby and her own judgment.
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Every Female Villain In Cobra Kai
All Of The Other Female Villains Are Ultimately Redeemed
Zara is not the only female antagonist inCobra Kai.Because the show is dominated by male characters, however, many of those female “villains” are redeemed before they go too far, or become love interests. Only one gets a truly significant amount of screen time too - Tory.
They are not even given the chance to simmer in their villainy.
Yasmine, who is initially presented as one of Sam’s new friends and Aisha’s bully, is quickly relegated to no more than Demetri’s (Gianni DeCenzo) love interest once Aisha is written out of the show following season two. She has very little to do after that and her motivation for bullying Aisha is never made clear beyond her being a stereotypical mean girl who has a heart underneath.
Tory is presented as an antagonist for Samin season 2, and indeed, the two develop a fierce rivalry because of Sam’s judgment, their interests in the same boys, and their different approaches to karate and life in general. They overcome their differences and become friends, even training together. Sam even coaches Tory for the Sekai Taikai after she drops out herself.Tory has an antagonistic nature, but she is not an outright villain, just someone who allows her anger to get the better of her. The audience gets to pull back Tory’s layers to see that.
Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim) is the heir apparent to the Cobra Kai dojo in Korea. She is initially presented as a villain, someone who is going to stir things up at the Sekai Taikai with Kreese (Martin Kove). She becomes more layered as the audience gets to see how vicious her father is and how much she desires to change her family’s legacy. She does bad things, but she also becomes the love interest for Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) and attempts to redeem her actions in the end, so she is not an outright villain either.
While Tory ends up being one of the most compelling characters in the show, and Kim Da-Eun could have done with more screen time, Zara is the only character who fully leans into her competitive nature and remains a villain out of the few female antagonists.
The male villains in the series far outnumber the women. They also get significantly more screen time.That is largely because they are brought in from the movie arm of the franchise. Their backstories are fleshed out, some of them are redeemed, and many of them become new allies for the main characters.The female characters, outside of Tory, are not given the chance to grow significantly.They are not even given the chance to simmer in their villainy. The male characters are villains for decades in some cases.
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Zara Provides A New Angle For The Show
She is absolutely the kind of character the audience loves to hate…
The latter two are not even presented as possible until the final season of the show.Tory essentially gets the win that Zara has been working years for, getting a contract with a major company and being able to pursue martial arts as a touring champion.Zara is the only character who has even hinted at that being a possibility, and it’s a shame she, or other characters like her, were not presented earlier in the show.
Vallandingham was chosen to model for the 2025 swimsuit issue ofSports Illustrated.
It’s strange that neither idea becomes a prevalent part of the show or is used to include more female fighters earlier in the series.Zara truly brings the special brand of villainy inCobra Kaiinto the modern era, and it’s a shame more female characters like her were not utilized better in the series. She is absolutely the kind of character the audience loves to hate, andCobra Kaineeded more women like her.
