New Year’s morning, Netflix dropped the 3rd season of Cobra Kai for streaming, with all 10 episodes dropped at once.

Cobra Kai, set 34 years after the end of the original Karate Kid from 1984, has Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprising their roles as Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence.

At the end of the first episode of the 3rd season, the following card was shown prior to running the end credits:

Talk about a kick to the gut when I saw that tribute to actor Rob Garrison, who played Tommy in the 1984 movie, and was one of the main “Cobras” who hung around with Johnny outside of training at the dojo in 1984.

In the 6th episode of the 2nd season that streamed in mid 2019, three of the four Cobra friends of Johnny reunited with Johnny (and all played by the original actors).

The reason, Tommy was terminally ill in the hospital, and his friends arranged an overnight motocross (they rode motorcycles in the original movie) and received approval from the hospital to take Tommy with them.

A poignant campfire man-to-man talk between Tommy and Johnny took place.

Johnny is awakened the next morning hearing his other two friends trying to revive Tommy, but he had passed away in his sleep overnight.

Seeing the season 3 tribute, I read on Wikpedia actor Rob Garrison, less than 5 months after the drop/streaming of the episode, passed away in real life under similar circumstances late in 2019.

Here’s the brief video of the campfire one-to-one, with the message about time:

Listening to the time discussion, one gets the impression Rob Garrison was not acting.