Why Cobra Kai Is Ending With Season 6

Curtis Bonds Baker/Netflix

"Cobra Kai" has had a good run, but season 6 finally brings it to the finish line. "Cobra Kai's" final season is split into three parts, with two of them already available on Netflix and the final one premiering on February 13, 2025. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight (via People), "Cobra Kai" co-showrunner Josh Heald confirmed that the show ending at this exact stage is completely intentional, seeing as it had a clear arc from the beginning — at least for the major characters. 

"We did always know how the show was going to end to a degree. For the bigger characters, we did know how it was going to end. We never could have predicted just how many characters we would acquire along the way who deserve their own bombastic endings as well."

Season 6, it appears, is simply the point in the series where the plot allows showrunners Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg to give their Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do heavy-hitters their planned endings. As to why the final season has the peculiar length of 15 episodes released in blocks of five, Heald confirmed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that this was necessitated by the show's massive number of characters — as well as a desire to avoid unnecessary filler episodes. 

"We wanted to bring it in for a landing, but we needed more than one season and probably less than two seasons. We ended up with a nice round number of 15."

Netflix

Few could have expected "Cobra Kai" to become a six-season juggernaut when it debuted as a YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) original in 2018. Yet, the new adventures of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) have proved both enduring and entertaining. Especially after the show made a jump to Netflix in 2020, it has grown into an unstoppable martial arts comedy-drama train that happily mixes new high-kicking storylines with updates on every available character from the first three "The Karate Kid" movies. 

Since "Cobra Kai" has been so successful at reviving and updating the classic 1980s franchise, the "Miyagi-verse" it has so lovingly established isn't going anywhere when the show ends. In fact, the franchise's future already includes projects like director Jonathan Entwistle's ("The End of the F***ing World," "I Am Not Okay With This") 2025 "The Karate Kid" movie starring Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan, and Ben Wang, titled "Karate Kid: Legends." 

The "Cobra Kai" showrunners themselves also intend to further explore the universe they helped expand and revitalize. In the wake of "Cobra Kai" season 6 part 2 using AI and "Outer Range" actor Brian Takahashi to bring back old and young versions of Pat Morita's beloved franchise MVP Mr. Miyagi, Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg have been planning a very particular prequel series. Here's how Schlossberg described their plans for a Mr. Miyagi show in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: 

"We've talked to Robert Mark Kamen, the writer of the original 'Karate Kid.' We've been talking about all this Miyagi backstory with him. Now that we're done [with 'Cobra Kai'], we can actually start getting into this stuff."