Sign in to your ScreenRant account
Custom image by Simone Ashmoore
WARNING: This interview includes MAJOR spoilers from Cobra Kai season 6 - part 2.Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg explain the major events that took place in Cobra Kai season 6 - part 2 and how this sets up the final five episodes of the series. Following the Cobra Kai season 6 - part 1, ending, which set the students up for the Sekai Taikai, part 2 was now all about going through with it as they face fighters across the globe. While Miyagi-Do has had its fair share of tough challenges, the Sekai Taikai take it to the next level.
However, not only has Cobra Kai's Sekai Taikai storyline become some of the show's most impressive work in the action department, but it quickly became one of the darker arcs explored in the series. Daniel LaRusso makes the biggest discovery about Mr. Miyagi that forever changes the Karate Kid icon's history with the franchise. But things would only take a hard turn from there, as the Cobra Kai season 6 - part 2 finale resulted in one of the newest players of the final season meeting a grim fate.
Related
What Kind Of Martial Arts Style Does Cobra Kai Teach Exactly?
Cobra Kai features a more violent style of karate that differs from Mr. Miyagi’s teachings, but how does it compare to its real world usage?
After everything that went down in the latest five episodes of the Netflix series, ScreenRant sat down with Cobra Kai showrunners and directors Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg to take that audience behind the decisions made during the final season's midpoint. The trio addressed the unexpected death that took place in the Cobra Kai season 6 part 2 finale, how it changes things forever in the world of karate, and the challenges that came with crafting episode 10. The Cobra Kai bosses also broke down the return of one of the biggest foes in the franchise and the shocking secret of Mr. Miyagi's mysterious past.
Cobra Kai Creators Breakdown The Fallout From Season 6 Part 2
ScreenRant: Hayden, I want to ask you this, I went through the credits, and I'm like, 'It is him!' How was it acting in this episode? And for you two, might we see your faces in the Cobra Kai/Karate Kid universe towards the end of the season?
Hayden Schlossberg: As we've said before, anything is possible in terms of who may show up when it comes to Jon and Josh in future episodes. I've always loved the Terry Silver character, not that Jon and Josh haven't. But I've been vocal online about my passion for that character, and I've always enjoyed defending the character and encouraging people to view things from his perspective. And it's funny because you watch Karate Kid 3, and he's just one of the worst human beings alive.
It's just this corporate raider guy who's getting involved in destroying this teenage kid's life. [laughs] There's just nothing redeeming about him. And yet, that's only from one perspective, and we love on this show to delve deep into the past of these characters, so I've always been vocal about that with Terry Silver and encouraging people to view things from his perspective. When we decided to have him get arrested at the end of season 5, I started throwing out there the possibility of just being his defense attorney, because I like the idea of getting him off and allowing him to be unleashed in this final season, just as a fun inside joke. But that's the one type of role I felt confidence in that I could bring authenticity to because I love the character so much.
Josh Heald: Hayden became insufferable as a performer, he questioned every line that was written, going, "Would his character really say this?" It was a lot when we met actor Hayden, who really, really dug his feet in.
Hayden Schlossberg: It is interesting because I get to see the show from the perspective of the actor, and it was a different way in that I enjoyed the control of being behind the scenes. But luckily, we had a great director and Sherwin Shilati for that episode.
Cobra Kai's Jon Hurwitz On Mr. Miyagi's Dark Secret & Potential Setup For A Prequel Spinoff Show
Custom image by Ana Nieves We learn Mr. Miyagi's big secret: he's a killer. This is a character people have followed for decades, and they've loved him since the first movie came out. What led you guys to add this to his past? You've talked about exploring the idea of a Mr. Myagi prequel. Is this something that would be further explored of how he gets to this point, or is that something we learn more about in part 3?
Jon Hurwitz: Well, first of all, I want to start with that we love Mr. Miyagi as much as everybody loves Mr. Miyagi...We love Mr. Miyagi so much, as does Robert Mark Kamen, who created Mr. Miyagi, who we spend a lot of time talking about the character with. This was really born out of, from the very beginning of the series, it's been important to us and Ralph Macchio for Mr. Miyagi to be very present.
As we were entering season 6, we like the idea of exploring that you don't know everything about your parents, relatives or mentors. You only get to see a slice of them. You don't get to learn everything about them in your lives, typically. For Daniel to be learning things about Mr. Miyagi at this later stage in life., as he's a sensei promoting Miyagi-Do all over the world, we thought that it was an interesting character place for Daniel to be going through and working through things.
In terms of what happened at the Sekai Taikai, we don't know the specifics of that. We get a little taste of it. We see a dream sequence from Daniel of what's in his head, and with him wrestling and fighting the demons of Mr. Miyagi in his own head. But we're learning some things from Miyagi's past that may have informed the man that he became in the future. In terms of would this kind of thing show up in a potential Mr. Miyagi series? Potentially, potentially not.
But I think the bigger thing for us is that Mr. Miyagi had a life well beyond what we just saw in the Karate Kid films. You only got to see a small slice of his life, and got to hear a little bit more about things. He was in war, this is somebody who had a lot of life experience beyond teenage karate tournaments in the Valley, and his life was complicated. Whatever happened at the Sekai Taikai in the past is something that, as of right now, we only know a little bit about. Perhaps we'll learn more about it as time goes on.
Cobra Kai's Josh Heald On The Shocking Death Of Kwon & Consequences For Part 3
Image via Netflix Were there a lot of conversations about having a major character death, and was it always going to be Kwon? Even though Cobra Kai gets very violent, death is not really something we've always dealt with in this show. Walk me through that process.
Josh Heald: We want to up the stakes and up the ante and have new, unexpected twists and turns as the series evolves, and ultimately will climax. It's the idea that anything can happen, there is a formula of how an episode of Cobra Kai generally plays out, or how a mid season episode might crescendo or how a finale might leave you with a big gut punch, or a big unexpected turn. We haven't gone to that place, besides Tommy dying in season 2 — but he was already a character that was terminally ill, and he wasn't a kid.
We knew we were going to go to this place. We knew we were going to do it with the Kwon character, and part of doing that is you need to make that character really investable. You want to write that character in a way that they jump off the screen so it doesn't feel like, 'Oh this other guy that we kind of haven't really been following died. That's terrible that somebody died.' You want to have a connection to that character, whether positive or negative or mixed. Kwon was that character for us, and Brandon H. Lee was the performer to embody that character, and did it with such strength and such flair and such charisma beyond what we were even writing.
He was bringing in energy, and bringing that je ne sais quoi to that performance. That was more than we could have asked for, so by the time we got there, it was bittersweet because you start imagining, 'Oh, we can continue to write to this character!' Because he's such a great fly in the ointment and such a great wild man. But at the same time, there was a method to the madness and a reason why we were pulling that lever at that time. It will naturally have reverberations into the end game of the series. To be most effective, it needs to carry weight.
It needs to have conflict, and it needs to feel like you did something very surprising to a character that feels like there was more meat on the bone to mind. It wasn't just 'Okay, we've done everything we can with this character and now here's the end.' Sometimes, you need to zag when people are expecting you to zig.
His death was broadcast to the whole world, and you still have five more episodes to show us after that death! Will the world that these characters live in have a reaction to what karate has now become? A kid died on live television, so what kind of repercussions will this have? It's no longer just about the tournament, it's about the politics and state of karate.
Hayden Schlossberg: That's something that we talked about in the room. What is going to be the reaction to this karate match? Because it's not just a rumble in the streets, this is something that's televised. This is something that is being billed as a major sporting event, so you would imagine this would be on the news cycle afterward. You would imagine that people would be talking about it afterwards. Different ways that can reverberate and have an effect on the characters that exist in our world, we're not going to spoil anything, but that is a big part of the final five episodes.
It was always by design to make it where everything is in disarray and unresolved at the end of episode 10. It's the last episode that we're going to have the ability to keep things unresolved. Spoiler alert, we resolve most things on the show, but when we finish the thing off, we don't want to leave this series with everyone feeling like, 'Okay, well, nothing was tied up.' So we really like the idea of just blowing everything up, where you just don't know what's going to happen next, not just for the characters, but for the sport itself.
Cobra Kai Team On The Makings Of The Epic Brawl In Episode 10
For my final question, how many days did that big fight take? First of all, I'm glad that we're not in the COVID restrictions anymore, because there's no way we could have ever had this two seasons ago. How many days did this take to make happen?
Josh Heald: I want to say four. It dawned on us, like, 'How are we going to do this?' We had to prepare for those four, maybe five, four and a half days [of shooting] for about a month.
Jon Hurwitz: There was so much that went on, went into it, and we had so much fighting at that venue that it was just constant. So it's hard to compartmentalize everything. But yeah we did not have a whole lot of time in the grand scheme of things, when you look at how much is happening there, and as you say, the extras. A lot of the extras that we had were people who were martial artists of some sort, and then we also had more stunt background than you typically had, that we were building into these fights that you had leading up to this. In the four episodes leading up to this, and then that 6x10 finale, you're seeing different fights on the mats.
So not all of them are characters that you're focused on, but they are populating that world. But it was a big undertaking. We had so many different characters there, and so many storylines that are going that are all weaving together. From a writing standpoint, it was a challenge from the cinematography, the fight choreography - everybody came to play, all the actors, all the stunt performers. Our stunt coordinators and fight coordinators. Ken Barefield, Don Lee...how did they not win the Emmy for stunts comedy?! This is in the comedy category that it's frankly shocking that they haven't won to this point. They've had many nominations. We've had nominations on the show over the years, but we're hoping that this is the one that gets [it] done for them.
More About Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 2
At the Sekai Taikai, Miyagi-Do faces new challenges and old enemies as they fight to become world champions — can they stay united as internal rivalries bubble back to the surface? Cobra Kai is written and executive produced by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg via their production company, Counterbalance Entertainment. Will Smith, James Lassiter and Caleeb Pinkett executive produce for Westbrook Studios along with Susan Ekins in association with Sony Pictures Television. Ralph Macchio and William Zabka also serve as executive producers.
Be sure to check out Screen Rant's Cobra Kai season 6, part 1 and part 2 interviews:
- Cobra Kai Stars Ralph Macchio, William Zabka & Yuji Okumoto On Villain-To-Hero Journeys And Mr. Miyagi Mystery
- Cobra Kai Miyagi-Do & Eagle Fang Actors Tease Brief Peace In The Valley And Reignited Rivalries
- Cobra Kai Creators On Sekai Taikai, Mr. Miyagi Mystery & Closing Out Karate Kid Show
- Cobra Kai Showrunners Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg Preview Season 6 Part 2's Satisfying Arcs
- Cobra Kai's Macchio, Zabka & Okumoto Talk Emotional Sekai Taikai In Season 6 Part 2 And New Karate Kid Movie
- Cobra Kai's Miyagi-Do Stars & Peyton List Tease Season 6 Part 2's Sekai Taikai And Emotional Turmoil
- Cobra Kai Creators Talk Season 6 Part 2, Introducing The Villainous New Dojo Iron Dragons & Kreese's Return
Cobra Kai season 6 - parts 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix, with part 3 set to arrive sometime in 2025.
Source: Screen Rant Plus
Set decades after the events of the Karate Kid franchise, Cobra Kai shifts gears and puts viewers into the perspective of a former rival/antagonist, Johnny Lawrence. In his 50s and down on his luck, a chance encounter with a bullied young man leads Johnny back to Karate. Agreeing to help him, Johnny takes the opportunity to revive his former home, the Cobra Kai dojo - becoming a refuge for outcast teens.
Seasons 6
Showrunner Jon Hurwitz
English (US) ·