Maxance Vincent
This year, I finally decided to plunge into Cobra Kai, after Karate Kid Legends was shooting in my neighborhood the entire summer of 2024, convinced me to give it a go, even as a massive fan of the first three films directed by John G. Avildsen, which were formative for my appreciation of cinema. I had never seen Cobra Kai when it aired, but watching it from beginning to end the way I did, it was an unforgettable experience I will carry for a very long time. The writing is impeccable, the callbacks to the original Karate Kid movies feel earned (including the highly anticipated grand return of Terry Silver, brilliantly played by Thomas Ian Griffith), and how each arc is terrifically paid off is honestly very impressive, especially during the final five episodes. No stone is left unturned, and it may possibly stand the test of time as one of the best “legacy sequels” ever made.
And little did I know that, a day after wrapping the show, which I had been watching an episode a day since February, it would lead up to a thirty-minute-long conversation with showrunners Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg on saying goodbye to the beloved Netflix series. As many of you know, the series ends with Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) coming out on top as the number one karate champion in the world in the Sekai Taikai, reclaiming the mantle of Cobra Kai, and building a life he is proud of with his friend and partner, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) at his side, who has finally embraced Cobra Kai in the hands of Johnny after many years of hardship.
According to showrunner Jon Hurwitz, this was the plan from the very beginning:
“I don’t know if we knew definitively that he would be fighting on the world stage, but we always wanted to bring it back to the red mats at the All Valley tournament, and give him a chance at ultimate redemption, but this time with Daniel LaRusso as his partner, as opposed to his adversary, with the two of them as friends. That was the overarching goal.”
I never would’ve expected, in a million years, that Daniel LaRusso would not only be embracing Cobra Kai but ensure that his students in the Valley are both trained in Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai, though one of the core tenets of Mr. Miyagi’s karate is balance. In mapping out the progression of Daniel’s arc throughout the six seasons, Hayden Schlossberg explains that “for Daniel, a running theme in his story is overcoming the trauma of his past. His childhood ended with a happy ending as he entered into adulthood, and that’s why he became generally successful.
It’s not until Cobra Kai comes to town that he notices a new wrinkle in his life that he needs to iron out. Part of that is looking back at the past, not just in a black and white way, because he’s now an adult. He can understand things about Johnny that he didn’t know when he was a kid. That opens his mind, not just to the people, but to the philosophies themselves. We’re always trying to find the balance, like in Miyagi-Do, of a character who stays true to who he is, while recognizing there’s someone with a different mode of life that they could totally disagree with, but it works for them. I think that was a realization. Through that, you get over the fear of snakes, essentially.”
In reflecting on the show’s success, Josh Heald explains that “from the beginning, it was incredibly rewarding to have the validation that there was a giant fandom out there, waiting for this show the way that we imagined there would be. For us, Karate Kid was on the same level as Star Wars for little kids in the early 80s, devouring everything that came to the cinema, and in terms of movies that we re-watched again and again. When we got VCRs and eventually DVD players, Karate Kid was always in heavy rotation. It had so many themes that felt timeless, and there was that excitement of showing it to your kids.
Everything about that first launch was validating, and the ability to tell as long a story as we did was something that felt like rarefied air. Not taking for granted that that can ever happen again, to be able to make 65 episodes of anything in today’s environment takes a high-wire act. In our case, it took the collapse of one streaming platform’s scripted division and a pandemic. Many different things went into how we made six seasons of this show, and being able to leave it all on the table and tell the complete story that we envisioned in our heads back when we were putting this together in 2016 and 2017. I mean, we’ve blown up yachts, we’ve had multiple all-Valley tournaments, we’ve had international tournaments. We’ve had every kind of brawl you can imagine, with people falling from all sorts of heights. We played the tears, the laughs, the fists, pumps, the goose bumps, and everything in between. It was so rewarding to to be able to deliver that, to connect with this fandom that is essentially an extension of who we are as a fandom, of this this franchise, and be able to count all of those characters that we met in those first three movies as close friends now in terms of the legacy characters, and watch this whole generation of young kids grow up on the show and step into the next phases of their careers. It’s an endless list of things we’re thankful for.”
Of course, there was much, much more to talk about, and you can watch it all in our conversation below. Strike first, and check it out right now!
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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