Cobra Kai Part 2 Finale: EPs Talk Return of [Spoiler] and How Those Tragic Final Moments ‘Deeply Inform the Endgame of the Series’
The following contains spoilers for Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 2.
Amanda LaRusso was right: The karate drama has gone way too far. And now, it’s officially turned deadly.
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In the Season 6, Part 2 finale of Cobra Kai, sheer pandemonium hits the Sekai Taikai, as tensions between the warring dojos boils over and explodes. After one of the tournament’s officials gets clocked in the face, a riot breaks out and rivals start fighting dirty. Kreese and Silver go head-to-head, Johnny takes on Sensei Wolf, and when Zara starts pummeling Tory, Robby decisively chooses his girl.
But when Kreese realizes his eunjangdo is missing, we see Kwon eye the lost weapon on the ground. He picks it up in a fit of madness, but before he can use it on one of the Iron Dragons, he’s kicked to the ground, impaling himself on the blade and screaming a scream that’s literally heard around the world. (“Cut the feed!”) When Daniel turns the boy’s body over, blood is pooled on the ground and it’s clear: Kwon is no more.
Below, TVLine talks to Cobra Kai co-creators and executive producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg about Kwon’s tragic fate, Terry Silver’s epic return and how that wild melee made it to screen.
TVLINE | Kwon tragically dies in this final battle where all hell breaks loose at the Sekai Taikai. Will his death have a ripple effect on the other dojos and how will that propel us into Part 3?
HEALD | His death is a big moment and it should reverberate across the karate community. This was a televised event that went out across the world. The Sekai Taikai has finally come out of the shadows and is being broadcast as a major sporting event and this happens. It’s terrible and there’s a lot of people who are going to very likely place blame on themselves. It throws the whole idea of competitive karate and the safety of that into question, and whether or not anyone’s intentions, good, bad or otherwise, are to blame for what’s happened. It will have as much impact as any possible cliffhanger ever has on this show and it will deeply inform the endgame of the series.
TVLINE | The fight scenes get more and more intense in every new batch of episodes. From a production standpoint, how did you pull off the training, the planning, the shooting and everything in between that went into a brawl of this size?
HURWITZ | It’s a miracle and it’s a passionate team of individuals that are all determined. We don’t have the resources of many other shows that would try to pull off this kind of thing, we’re technically a 22-minute comedy, even though most of our episodes are close to double that and have tons of stunts. It started in the writer’s room with us deciding, “We’re in our final season. Let’s blow it out. Let’s have a melee that’s beyond anything we’ve done before, beyond the school fight, beyond the house fight in the Season 2 and Season 3 finales.” And we’re in an environment where everyone knows karate, so it’s not just students in one place, students and senseis are all in the same location.
It was a lot of work in the build up. Making sure that there’s juice in the fights that we have, making sure that everything that’s happening is meaningful to the audience. So whether it’s something big like Kreese and Silver matching up or Daniel and Johnny having this new Sensei Wolf that they’re dealing with, or with the kids, there’s all these conflicts from long ago to new conflicts with side dojos that we get a little taste of. It’s planning all that stuff. But then from a production standpoint, we have the best stunt team in the business. They had to plan each and every fight, and each and every fighter needed their own specific style or something that’s consistent with the training they’ve had. The thing that’s amazing is it’s not just stunt performers at this point. A lot of the kids on our show and the senseis as well have been doing martial arts now for many years. There’s a fully working dojo on our stages. When everyone’s in Atlanta filming, the kids and the adults are training nonstop and much of what you see on screen are performances from our actors doing martial arts.
The shooting of it, we had a limited amount of time. I think we shot that whole melee in probably less than four days. Director Sherwin Shilati was phenomenal. He’s super prepared, puts a lot of thought into making it dynamic and working with us and our stunt team and our amazing DP [Director of Photography] Abe Martinez to pull it off in a spectacular way. Then in post-production, we were working with our editors to keep it moving, keep it strong, and then working with our composers to make sure that each character, each dojo has their own musical themes that we’re playing with and carrying through, so that each individual fight has its own little flavor. So, that was one of the biggest undertakings that we’ve had on the series and we couldn’t be prouder of it.
TVLINE | Daniel gets abducted in this second part and we learn it’s at the hands of Terry Silver. Can you tell me a little bit about bringing Thomas Ian Griffith back and the role that Terry Silver plays in Parts 2 and 3?
HURWITZ | Thomas Ian Griffith is one of our favorite performers. Not only on this show, but just in general. Working with him is amazing and he’s just such a fine actor. Him being taken down at the end of Season 5 was a huge turning point on Cobra Kai, but we liked the idea of him disappearing for a while and us forgetting about him. There’s enough conflict between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do, and now they’ve got all these other teams from all over the world to contend with. So just when you’ve forgotten about Terry Silver, we wanted him to poke his head back up there and we felt like this is where he would be. He’s the kind of rich, billionaire type who, despite whatever crimes he commits, is going to find his way out of jail with the help of an attorney who may be on this Zoom with us. [Schlossberg plays Silver’s lawyer.]
But we think that he would be determined to make sure that if Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do are on this world stage with cameras in front of them, they get humiliated and that he is a part of the championship dojo. So he used his considerable wealth to basically buy a team of ringers, the defending champions who, as you know, Sensei Wolf has had some financial troubles. Luckily for Terry, he can go in there and make him an offer that he can’t refuse. And we love bringing Terry back in that hot tub. In Karate Kid III, it’s one of the most iconic images. That’s something we’ve talked about for a while, so we felt having his re-emergence in a hot tub felt appropriate.
TVLINE | Silver gives Daniel an old record that states that Miyagi killed his opponent during a Sekai Taikai back in the day. What can you tease about the Miyagi history we’ll learn in Part 3?
SCHLOSSBERG | We are going to learn more about Miyagi’s history in the final five episodes, but we’re never going to know it all. We purposely set up this box and all the items in the box as a hint at a life that is much more complex than what Daniel remembered. He only knew him as a mentor, but [Miyagi] was a full human being with ups and downs throughout his entire life.
I think you’re going to come out of it with a greater understanding in some ways, but also still questions left to be answered. But the knowledge that there was a greater complexity there, Daniel is clearly left unsettled by that information to the point where he’s having this horrible nightmare. He kind of gets to the place where, “You know what? It doesn’t make sense to dwell in the past. Just focus on the present.” But that doesn’t really alleviate those deep-seated fears. They’re still in there. And I think we’re going to confront those in the final five, while still leaving questions to be answered after the show ends.
TVLINE | Leaving questions open for a Miyagi prequel series, perhaps?
SCHLOSSBERG | Absolutely! We are shameless. [Laughs]
What did you think of Part 2? Grade it and the finale below, then share your thoughts and theories in the comments!
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