The ‘Cobra Kai’ Bosses Want to Give Mr. Miyagi His Prequel Story
It’s been two weeks now since fans of Netflix’s super popular series Cobra Kai have been able to watch the first part of the three-part final season (the first five episodes of season six have been viewed worldwide 24.3 million times since the July 18 release, per the streamer).
And in the five episode-premiere, it initially appeared there would be peace in The Valley of Los Angeles between Danny LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and the various kids of their respective karate schools. But as events and rivalries typically go in this world of high school angst with black belts, peace received a flying kick out of the dojo.
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But that simply meant more thrills to come, according to Cobra Kai’s creators Hayden Schlossberg, Josh Heald and Jon Hurwitz. The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with the trio to talk about the upcoming Part 2 (dropping Nov. 15) and Part 3 (airing sometime in 2025) remaining 10 episodes for the final season. In the chat below, they shared insight on what their creative world might look like after this successful series run, as they contemplate branching even farther from the original tree that sparked off everything, the 1984 hit movie The Karate Kid, and eye a possible Mr. Miyagi prequel.
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It’s been 40 years since the original movie The Karate Kid premiered in movie theaters. Why has that foundational story of Daniel LaRusso, Johnny Lawrence and, of course, Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) transferred and resonated with so many generations through the Cobra Kai series?
JON HURWITZ That was by design from the beginning. First of all, we all fell in love with The Karate Kid in the ’80s, but people have been falling in love with The Karate Kid ever since parents showed it to their kids over the last 40 years. Not everyone who watched Cobra Kai had seen The Karate Kid, though; so, for us, it was a combination of making sure that we’re continuing the stories of characters that people who had watched The Karate Kid already loved like Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, bringing them back into this world in fun and unexpected ways and reignite their rivalry. But at the same time, we wanted to capture what we loved about young Daniel, Johnny and Ali [Mills played by Elisabeth Shue], which was falling in love with these teenage characters.
And when creating the characters of Miguel [Diaz, played by Xolo Mariduena], Robby [Keene, played by Tanner Buchanan] and Sam [LaRusso, played by Mary Mouser], and all the other kids, we were hoping to make all of them compelling. So, first and foremost, Johnny and Daniel cared about these kids. They were relevant in their worlds, so old heads like us would watch it and immediately be invested because they are the children or the students of characters that we’re already invested in. But young people could see themselves in this new this new generation — Miguel being the underdog that he was at the beginning of the series, and each kid feeling real and having their own kind of teenage issues that today’s generation can connect with was important to us from the beginning. And we cast amazing actors who are lovable and talented. Lightning struck twice.
So, Miguel was always supposed to be like the Daniel character of Cobra Kai?
JOSH HEALD Definitely! By 1984, Daniel, just by virtue of having dark hair and being from New Jersey, was completely out of place and a fish out of water in The Valley of Los Angeles. And present day, we wanted to design a group of kids in a high school that’s reflective of what Los Angeles is now. It’s not just a sea of blonde; it’s a sea of everybody, and Miguel is one piece of that puzzle. He is still a fish out of water coming into this new place and filling that Daniel LaRusso-type of role. But he’s not coming from New Jersey, he’s coming from Riverside. And his family is originally from Ecuador. And it’s not culture shock because of any particular cultural difference that he comes from compared to the other kids at school. That’s just any new kid dealing with the social hierarchy. But it’s clearly culture between him and Johnny, where Johnny hasn’t really checked in with modern-day society in the past 35 years and couldn’t place Ecuador on a map, and takes multiple seasons to figure out the cuisine. So, there was a lot to play with there that is almost like a reverse Mr. Miyagi relationship, where Daniel had a lot to learn about where Okinawa is on a map.
When did you start thinking about expanding on the background of Mr. Miyagi? I wont call it sinister, but he definitely appears to have a more violent backstory than the sweet, quiet, loving man we met 40 years ago in the original film.
HAYDEN SCHLOSSBERG From the very beginning of this series, we’ve liked the idea of exploring the Miyagi character from the perspective of Daniel LaRusso. The character of Miyagi has always been there every season of the show. So, going into every season, we think about, how do we bring those Miyagi vibes to that season? And going into this last season, we wanted to give the Daniel LaRusso character the ultimate conflict, which would be challenging his thoughts about Mr. Miyagi. And we just draw that from real life where people view their parents or mentors as perfect people, or at least that they have this authority on their lives, and then you get older and you see your mentor as a human being and in a more three-dimensional way.
Now, we only have the first five episodes out there [of the finale season], and he’s only gotten a taste of it. Yet, putting Daniel through that kind of turmoil just felt like in keeping with what we’ve done every season, and gave us the kind of big finale we’re ultimately looking for. The short answer is that as we got into thinking about season six, it became the main central thing we wanted Daniel to be going through.
In the first five episodes of this final season, it initially seemed like there would be peace in The Valley, especially between the kids who were once a part of Cobra Kai, Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang. But then there seemed to be a lot of wounds that still needed healing as the kids competed for the few coveted spots for the Sekai Taikai tournament (coming up in Part 2). How will this turmoil play into the rest of season six?
HURWITZ In the writers room, we always start from the headspace of where our characters are. At the end of season five, they had taken down Terry Silver [Thomas Ian Griffith], so there was seemingly peace time in the Valley; no villains are out there that they should be scared of. But we take each individual kid and adult, and figure out what they’re thinking going into the season. And for the kids, everyone was now welcomed into Miyagi-Do, but that doesn’t mean that suddenly Tory [Peyton List] — who has had conflict with Samantha [LaRusso] since season two, and yes, they kind of banded together amongst a group of kids to take down Terry Silver, but that doesn’t mean they’re automatically friends at the start of this. And it doesn’t mean that they work through the issues they’ve had with one another.
So, that was one of the things we were we were building through in that first five, to see a different look with those characters, to see them confront some of the issues that they had, and come to terms and actually become friends by the end of the first five — only for tragedy to strike for Tory, and her to feel like the only option she had, if she wants to fulfill her karate future, would be to go back to Cobra Kai. And we’ll see going forward what impact that has. For Johnny and Daniel, they each have very different approaches to their view of karate right now. Daniel views this as his karate swan song, doing this Sekai Taikai, bringing Miyagi’s lessons to the world, and that’s going to be a wonderful thing. But after that, he’ll sort of phase out of being a sensei and focus on the car dealership empire he has.
Johnny has the opposite in his life. He has a growing family that’s outgrown their apartment. It’s not their dream place, and he’s hoping that Sekai Taikai could lead to a karate future for him. So, he has his own motivations as to what he needs out of this tournament. And the two of them band together as Miyagi-Do, and we’ll see that Johnny putting in that Miyagi-Do gi, as much as he is trying to embrace the teachings there as things move on and they’re moving towards the tournament — they have to make decisions on the kids — that Johnny’s true colors can’t help but shine through. And Daniel can’t help but have concerns about what Johnny’s impact is to the Miyagi-Do legacy. Those are just a few examples of the kinds of thoughts we have with these characters as they’re entering peacetime in The Valley. That doesn’t mean they all are all aligned in their motivations, and their hopes and needs.
Do you think in this Cobra Kai universe that Daniel and Johnny can one day get past just tolerating each other and become true friends?
HEALD That’s the loaded question of the whole series. Can these two people, who had very different teachers and very different upbringings, and a very different coming of age experience, ever be able to see eye to eye for longer than is convenient? There have been moments on the series before where we’ve seen them come together and we’ve seen that go up in flames numerous times, including in season six where they’ve been together; they really lean into each other strongly in that first episode and by episode five, it’s again seemingly out the window. So, it is one of those conflicts that we love leaning into. We love the complexities of it, and the peaks and valleys of it. And you will have to see how the next 10 episodes continue to evolve that relationship, and land it where we’ve always felt it should be landed.
Are we going to see Terry Silver again?
SCHLOSSBERG I’m the biggest Terry Silver fan there is, and I can tell you, I would do everything I possibly can to bring him back. Whether that happens or not, you’ll have to see. But he’s somebody that I certainly hope to see again as a fan. And I definitely want it to happen. We’ll see if Jon and Josh stop me or not.
How do you balance the violence or action with the quirkiness of the show? The show seems to have viewers of all ages, but there can be some heavy, violent scenes along with the comedic moments.
HEALD It’s violent in the way that people get kicked in the head occasionally, and that’s normalized for our universe. But thankfully, with a few exceptions, we don’t get too gory, and we try not to make the violence gratuitous. And we certainly aren’t leading with violence. Sometimes, the violence becomes part of the story that’s used for extreme conflicts and to build rooting interests, and to build stakes in terms of the danger. But it’s playing an orchestra. We are dealing with a very large cast, a 40-year-old franchise; a multi-generational story. And you’re going to have moments that are going to be lighter and funnier that make you smile. You’re going to have moments that are going to, hopefully, make you feel sympathy for these characters and sadness for what they’re going through. And you’re going to have moments where your adrenaline is going to get pumped, and you’re going to be rooting for somebody to overcome something physical.
And we feel that in the storytelling. We’ve been telling stories for a long time, and we’ve been telling this story now for a long time. You kind of feel when the different instruments should come in for the different movements. It’s not unlike, Tchaikovsky Overture, you have moments where the flutes are doing their things and you have moments where the timpani are being banged as hard as they possibly can, and the sum total of that is the complete story. And you know any one of those things in too much measure can become overwhelming.
Do the kids, who are the main characters, get training in martial arts?
SCHLOSSBERG Usually they get training when they come to set and some, over the course of the seasons, have had training prior to them coming. And some of them just do it in their spare time anyway, because it has become a part of their lives. This is a show that started shooting in 2017, so for people like Xolo Mariduena and Tanner Buchanan and Jacob Bertrand (Eli), they’ve been having to train every year for the past like seven years. So, when they come back each season, they’re not at square one, they’re at like square 20. So, by this season, they are really amazing, and it’s great to see that. That’s one reason the show has gone on; their skills improved, so we could do more with them. So, our fight sequences are more exciting, and I’ll just say, for the first part, we’re really happy with how things turned out with episodes four and five, with the kids all competing against each other. But the next block where we have the best of the best in kids from all over the world is going to take the show to a whole new level. So, we’re really excited and it made our main character kids that much better to have to bring in these next-level martial artists. It’s going to be amazing, and we can’t wait for fans to see it.
What can you say about what we’ll see in Parts 2 and 3 of season six?
HURWITZ It’s hard for us to say exactly what Part 2 is and what Part 3 is. But we can say that, going into Part 2, we’re in Barcelona at the Sekai Taikai and we have the biggest, craziest martial arts tournament that has existed in The Karate Kid franchise. You’re not going to see just the same traditional events that you’ve seen at all the All Valleys. There’s a lot more going on, both on and off the mat. So, there’s a lot of fun to be had and, as we head into the third drop, I can’t speak to the specifics… but the goal in the final episodes is to land this mothership. To land Johnny and Daniel’s stories. And the stories of these kids. For the kids, it’s their senior year of high school and we wanted to take them through that year and have the Johnny and Daniel story that started in 1984 come to a fulfilling and exciting conclusion. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to see these characters again in the future, but it’s where we finished telling the story of Cobra Kai the series, and we can’t wait for people to see what we have in store.
So, is there room for spinoffs after you close the Cobra Kai chapters?
SCHLOSSBERG Absolutely! We think about spinoffs with Cobra Kai all the time. Cobra Kai itself is, in a way, a spinoff of The Karate Kid. We took the bully from The Karate Kid, we took that branch and created our own tree out of it, and we feel like we could do that with any of the characters on the show. We definitely thought about that as we’re tying things up with all the characters. We think about the fun of following them in their futures and in, addition, we think about the past. It is one of the reasons why we did the Miyagi box story this season. It opens up all these questions about Mr. Miyagi and what his life was like, and that’s been something we’ve been wanting to do for a while. We’ve talked to Robert Mark Kamen, the writer of the original Karate Kid who based this whole movie off his sensei who studied Okinawan karate; we’ve been talking about all this Miyagi backstory with him, which helped us with season six stuff. Now that we’re done, we can actually start getting into this stuff. We’ve just been focused on Cobra Kai and finishing it off. And right now, we’re in the process of editing the last couple episodes. Once that’s done, we’ll hopefully have some exciting things…
Oh! It sounds like we talking about a Mr. Miyagi prequel here!
SCHLOSSBERG I would say that we definitely want to do that and have been talking about that. But the focus has been on Cobra Kai. As we’re finishing that up, we’ll see exactly what path we take in terms of spinoffs, but it is definitely something that we’ve been wanting to do. It’s just that we want to wait until we get finished with Cobra Kai first before we get into that.
Cobra Kai is now streaming Part 1 on Netflix. Part 2 releases Nov. 15, followed by Part 3 in 2025.
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