‘Cobra Kai’ Cast and EPs Talk Final Season Fights and ‘Karate Kid’ Easter Eggs (Exclusive)
Written by Rtradio on July 9, 2024
The students and senseis of Cobra Kai are ready to return for their epic final showdowns.
Netflix’s Karate Kid follow-up series — in which Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprise their roles from the ’80s film franchise, instructing a new generation of fighters — is premiering its sixth and final season in three parts, with the first five episodes dropping on July 18.
“I think everybody’s going to be pleasantly surprised with the way it lands,” Zabka told ET’s Ash Crossan when the cast and producers sat down to discuss the final episodes of the popular series.
“Each [part of the] season is its own mini story that over arcs the whole season 6,” he explained. “It’s a great ending and it’s a great lead up to it.”
Season 5 of Cobra Kai ended with Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) — the corrupt leader of the villainous Cobra Kai dojo — arrested following a brutal fight with Daniel LaRusso (Macchio) and Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto), and John Kreese (Martin Kove) faking his death and breaking free from prison.
Now, in the upcoming final season, Daniel and his former rival, Johnny Lawrence (Zabka) must prepare the students of Miyagi-Do to leave the Valley and compete in the Sekai Taikai — the world championships of karate.
“The fighting this season is through the roof,” raved Tanner Buchanan, who plays Johnny’s formerly estranged son, Robby Keene. “There’s so much- the technicality of everything is 10 times what we even did last season… It’s just absolutely insane.”
For executive producers Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the final episodes are the perfect way to conclude this chapter in the Karate Kid canon — as well as say thank you to loyal fans who followed the show from its early seasons on YouTube Red and YouTube Premium before it landed at Netflix.
“It’s been a roller coaster up to this point,” Schlossberg noted. “We purposefully set it up so that our final season would be the biggest one yet, but at the same time we wanna stay true to the original Karate Kid. There’s all the themes, all the feels that you’ve ever had, it’s just gonna be amplified. [We’re] just hoping everyone loves it as much as we do.”
Hurwitz revealed that the Cobra Kai creative team has known from the start where the series would end for the main characters, however, he admitted, “We could’ve never predicted just how many characters we would acquire along the way, who would become meaningful to us and the fandom, who deserve their own bombastic endings as well.”
“This is a story that is more than just Johnny and Daniel at this point — this is a story that has, you know, 40 characters you care about and each of those characters has 900 relationships,” he noted with a laugh. “Making sense of that, landing so it felt honest and delivered upon expectations, was something that was a challenge but one that I think we accomplished.”
The trio also promised even more Easter eggs from the original films will be popping up in the upcoming episodes — even revealing that they’ve saved some special reveals for the farewell season.
“We like deep cuts, and I’ll say there are some deep cuts this season,” Schlossberg hinted. “There’s a couple that we’ve purposefully saved, waiting for the right time — and so there’s gonna be a lot of nostalgia in this final season… We’ve saved some of the best for last.”
The success of the series has plenty of fans clamoring for more from the Karate Kid/Cobra Kai universe — even before the final episodes reveal what’s to come. So does this mean the end for the beloved cast of characters?
“We’ll see,” Zabka teased. “We put a lot of work in the last five and half months and put our heart on the mat… If it is, it’s a great goodbye, and I’m very pleased with where it ends. But I don’t feel like there’s any end to these characters.”
“[Fans] won’t allow it,” Macchio agreed. “It’s always surprising, humbling and rewarding, so we’ll see what the next chapter will be.”
Cobra Kai seasons 1-5 are streaming now on Netflix. Season 6 Part 1 premieres July 18, with Part 2 following on Nov. 28. The finale event will debut in 2025.
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