The “Cobra Kai” showrunners wanted Part 2 of the show’s final season to end feeling like the “Empire Strikes Back” of the story, and the all-out brawl that broke out at the Sekai Taikai tournament certainly achieved that.
The show has featured a number of off-mat fights in previous seasons but Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Scholossberg told TheWrap they didn’t just want to play the hits this time around. They said it was the skill level – and that it’s students and senseis alike in the mix – that makes this brawl so much more dangerous.
“What makes it more dangerous, what makes it more interesting to look at is the fact that we’re in an environment where every single person in that room is a black belt, and they’re all the best karate fighters in the world,” Heald said. “What if we built up the pressure cooker to such a place where there are rivalries abundant. You have to keep turning up the heat and once you realize that this thing is a runaway train that’s not stopping anytime soon, you keep having to turn up that heat even more and even more. It has to go from, you know, blue hot to white hot.
He continued, “we’ve never had more background performers giving their all. It wasn’t just people were willing to get in there and mix it up – which makes it look like ‘Braveheart’ at times – where you look around the frame and realize everyone’s really kind of going at it and you lose track of who’s an actor, who’s a stunt performer, who’s a background performer. It really, it really brings you immersively into that scary environment.”
In the midst of all that fighting, Kreese (Martin Kove) squares off with Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) behind the stage. Silver gets the upper hand and looks to be contemplating whether or not to kill Kreese outright when Johnny comes to his old sensei’s rescue.
“Johnny is caught up in the frenzy of this brawl and sees the guy he hates the most,” Schlossberg said. “He’s going after Kreese probably to kick his ass and then sees him getting his ass kicked but by somebody who he hates. So it just makes sense to go after Terry because Kreese was already on the ground.”
Hurwitz added that he’s not even sure Johnny understands why he jumped in for Kreese in that moment.
“He says at the time ‘I owed you one’ because way back when Silver got a cheap shot on him when he wasn’t looking,” Hurwitz said. “Johnny may justify in his own mind like ‘okay this was my shot to to get him back.’ He could have witnessed the end of Kreese and potentially been happy with that but he chose not to. I think in the back five we’re going to have to see the impact that has for Johnny and Kreese and and you know where their story eventually ends.”
Part 2 ends bloody thanks to the reappearnce of the eujangdo knife Kreese bought in the first episode of the latest batch. It was clear it was going to be a Chekov’s Eujangdo right from the beginning but the question quickly became who the victim would be. The answer it turns out was Cobra Kai bad boy Kwon – who finds the weapon during the fight and tries to use it. He ends up falling on the knife himself as the episode – and Part 2 comes to a close.
“We wanted that knife to be something that you’re nervous about,” Schlossberg said. We felt that we set Kwon up in the first part as this is the new antagonist kid from overseas. So you’re just assuming that he’s going to be in a final fight or whatever – you think he’s going to have that plot armor.”
He finished, “we also wanted Kreese to have to see the consequences of some of the choices that he made. You’ll see how that reverberates into the last part.”
