An old adversary is slithering his way back to the All-Valley Karate Championship in season 4 of Netflix’s Cobra Kai, the wildly popular continuation of the Karate Kid films.

Terry Silver, played by Thomas Ian Griffith, has returned to the franchise after he was last seen tormenting Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso in 1989’s The Karate Kid Part III. Griffith tells ABC Audio it was the story that convinced him to come back. 

“You know I had been working as a writer and I wasn’t sure about going back into the whole acting thing to begin with,” Griffith says. “And then once I heard this incredible path they had mapped out from the backstory in Vietnam through what he’s been up to for the last 30 years and how that manifests itself in the show today I’m going ‘oh man, this is like gold!’

This season, Daniel and longtime frenemy Johnny Lawrence, played by William Zabka, forge an uneasy alliance between their dojos. Macchio says it required some changes on Daniel’s part.

“He lets go of some of his grip on the you know, Miyagi teachings,” Macchio says. “The more he sees Johnny and his daughter Samantha and how they’re interacting/reacting to this is where he loosens that grip and says maybe it’s time to find your own way.”

Cobra Kai has already been greenlit for a season five. So does the cast ever think about the endgame?

“The endgame is, it just keeps getting bigger,” Zabka says. “As far as characters go, hopefully there’s some resolve. I’d like Johnny to find some peace in his life and some love. You know, he was a good kid, he just had a bad teacher!”

Cobra Kai season four debuts Friday on Netflix.