Don’t expect Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) to have buried the hatchet entirely just because they’re finally working together when the final season of “Cobra Kai” begins.
The show’s executive producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg told TheWrap that just because Terry Silver has been vanquished and Cobra Kai dojos are outlawed in The Valley doesn’t mean that things can stay happy forever. Daniel and Johnny merged their dojos to prepare for the international Sekai Taikai tournament, but their relationship – as usual – is a bit strained.
“We just really wanted to find that new flavor to their rivalry,” Schlossberg said. “This season, they’re over splitting up, but it’s almost like a bad marriage where they’re staying together for the kids at times. If they’re bottling up their animosity toward each other, that’s not going to help the kids either.”
He added that “they’ve experienced the rivalry and they’ve gotten over things, so going into Season 6 it’s like things have never been better. But the fact that they have this tournament and have built all these relationships with these kids – they each kind of have their own ones that they’re close with – you’re constantly putting their friendship to the test.”
The first part of the final season of “Cobra Kai” dropped Thursday on Netflix – with Part 2 and 3 dropping in November and January. Heald said it was always in their plans for the show to end around now.
“As we’re coming out of Season 5, vanquishing Cobra Kai from the Valley, we felt like we had somewhere between one and two seasons left to tell before the show could just get gratuitous,” Heald said. “We weren’t just looking to walk in a new big bad for the sake of a big bad and not for the sake of delivering on the premise of why we set out to do this.”
The show ending also brings endings for many of our young characters – chiefly their time in high school. The four main students of Miyagi-do and Cobra Kai/Eagle Fang – Miguel (Xolo Maridueño), Samantha (Mary Mouser), Robby (Tanner Buchanan) and Tory (Peyton List) – have been entangled in a love quadrangle for seasons but now seem happily coupled with Miguel/Sam and Robby/Tory together. Expect that history, along with them practicing in the same dojo, to make things awkward despite everyone trying to be friends.
“It’s intentionally messy,” Heald said. “You want to be telling a teenage story that’s grounded in desires and hopes and dreams with the heightened reality that they live inside a karate ecosphere where that’s the most important thing in the universe. If you remove the karate layer of it, college and life and the haves and have-nots and the feelings of favoritism and the world owes me something – all these feelings of what it means to be 17 or 18 years old we want to reflect onscreen as well because their high school experience is coming to an end.”
“Cobra Kai” was one of the pioneers of the legacy sequel story trend that’s taken over the last few years and it remains one of the best examples of doing it the right way. With the show’s final season beginning, the creators are thinking about what its legacy will be.
“I think we’re just hoping that people love it the way we loved ‘Karate Kid’ and that it feels like a worthy chapter in this franchise that has meant so much to so many people for a really long time,” Hurwitz said.
