How Cobra Kai showrunners decide which Karate Kids characters to bring back
The Karate Kid spin-off returns to Netflix this week promising more deep-cut characters from the series' long history.
Watch: Cobra Kai's showrunners on how they decide which characters to bring back
Cobra Kai executive producer Jon Hurwitz, who shares showrunner responsibilities with Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, says that they’ve discussed every character that’s ever appeared in the Karate Kid universe when deciding who to bring back for the series.
But he stops short of revealing which returning characters we’ll see in the show’s final season, premiering with the first five episodes on Netflix from today.
"We’re unfortunately not able to talk about any characters that haven’t appeared on the show to this point," Heald tells Yahoo UK. "We always like to keep it a surprise as the season is dropping as to who may or may not show up going forward … we’ll find out who shows up and who doesn’t."
Fans hoping to see Hilary Swank’s Julie Pierce and Michael Ironside’s Colonel Dugan from 1994 sequel The Next Karate Kid could yet find themselves satisfied as the series completes its six-season run with 15 episodes, split into three parts of five episodes each.
In Season 6, we’ll see the characters take part in the international Sekai Taikai tournament in which dojos from around the world compete. It sets up a thrilling finale to a successful continuation of the martial arts franchise that looks likely to continue in one form or another, beginning with a new film that ties the original trilogy to the 2010 movie starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith.
The showrunners have ruled out the idea that Season 6 sets up that movie but that doesn’t necessarily mean cameos from the 2010 film are out. But how exactly do they decide who to bring back? To date, the show has fielded appearances from the likes of Elisabeth Shue’s Ali Mills, Yuji Okumoto’s Chozen Toguchi, and Sean Kanan’s Mike Barnes, among others.
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"We always just look at the story that we’re telling and where we are in the process," says series co-creator Josh Heald. "Coming into this season, there’s already 50 episodes of this franchise and the three original movies that preceded it — and the fourth, if we’re talking about The Next Karate Kid. So there’s a lot of material, there are a lot of villains, there are a lot of sub-villains and villain-adjacent individuals."
Heald continues, "You reach into those bags of tricks and you say, ‘Is this additive to the story? Is this extending this universe? Is this taking this storyline that was set in motion X-number of seasons ago, or X-number of movies ago and driving it forward and helping tell the story that we’re currently telling?
"Because we already have a lot of characters on this supposed half-hour show, so it has to be additive, it has to be juicy, it has to be exciting for the fans who get excited about it — and not just be gratuitous."
Another of the most notable bad guys yet to have made a re-emergence in the series is The Next Karate Kid’s secondary antagonist, Ned Randall, played by Michael Cavalieri. He’s a particularly loathsome character who made unwanted sexual advances on Hilary Swank’s Julie.
But we could also see any of the franchise’s teen antagonists’ pals make an appearance. Mike Barnes, for example, had a buddy named Dennis, played by William Christopher Ford. And with Mike Barnes sticking around for Season 6, this could make sense. Lower profile characters like this could arguably more easily slide into the storyline without feeling gratuitous.
The showrunners might be focusing on villains, but the Sekai Taikai opens the door to introducing dojos not only from around the world, but from across the US. Given that The Next Karate Kid is set in Boston, we could well see some of these characters, including Julie Pierce, returning as senseis of Massachusetts-based (or beyond) competitors.
Cobra Kai fans will all have their hopes as to who they’d like to see make a comeback — but with everybody on the show tight-lipped, they’ll have to wait to find out.
Cobra Kai Season 6: Part 1 is out now on Netflix.
