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This article contains major spoilers for Cobra Kai season 6 part 2.
Season 6 is the final bow for Cobra Kai, but don’t be fooled. The abrupt ending of episode 10 is akin to how Monty Python and the Holy Grail concluded. For Cobra Kai, this season is different – it’s more like a season and a half. While the previous five outings of the Karate Kid sequel were 10-episodes long, this one goes to 15.
This isn’t the end just yet. There are five more episodes of Daniel (Ralph Macchio), Johnny (William Zabka), and Chozen’s (Yuji Okumoto) journey to go. Cobra Kai showrunners Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg sat down with Den of Geek to discuss the rest of that journey.
Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 2’s Cliffhanger Ending at the Sekai Taikai
Season 6 episode 10 ends with another edge-of-your-seat cliffhanger – a stupefying camera cut right smack in the middle of an all-out battle royale with everyone in the mix. And when it comes to cliffhangers, Cobra Kai has earned a black belt.
“Our initial plan was that we would keep the final five episodes a secret to the world and then would end [episode 10] this way,” grins Hurwitz. “But I think a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a third batch. So we’re going to get what we wanted out of a lot of viewers who are just like ‘What? It ended like that!?’”
Season 6 takes Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do far away from the All Valley Karate Tournament, the fictional battleground for the two rival dojos, to the Sekai Taikai, a world tournament set in Barcelona.
“The big thing for us was we’ve built up the Sekai Taikai to be something that is unlike other karate tournaments – that there’s added levels of danger and unpredictability when it comes to what the events are going to be,” Hurwitz says.
The set up for the tournament is such that each character gets to fight in succession, allowing for complex character development within the fights and escalating tension. It’s not like any tournament seen before, real or fantasy, which creates a compelling showcase for the young cast.
“We definitely did some research on world tournaments,” Hurwitz says. “But we tried to free ourselves from what was real and create things that would happen in this tournament that was a little larger than life.”
The Villains Old and New
At the end of season 5, Kreese (Martin Kove) escaped from jail and weaseled his way back as the sensei of Cobra Kai to terrorize Daniel, Johnny, and their students. In a wicked season 6 twist, it turns out that Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) also evaded incarceration and returns for the Sekai Taikai.
“Injecting Terry Silver into the world, you have the twist of him double crossing Kreese, which you never see coming,” Schlossberg says. “So there’s always the soap opera between the original actors from The Karate Kid that we just love, that this little rivalry from 1984 is still reverberating today and causing all this havoc.”
The return of Silver ratchets up the action and the mercilessness. Suddenly Kreese is fighting a multifront war. “We like playing with the iconography of the original movie,” adds Schlossberg. “It’s always fun when you can take something from the original movie and repurposed it in Cobra Kai.”
Taking the Sekai Takai global opens the door to many new rival dojos. And within them, there are new villains. “In the very early going, we were really concentrating on bringing in new villainy, new bad guys and bad girls,” Heald says. Cobra Kai and Miyagi-do must face off against a brutal opposing team, the Iron Dragons. Leading that dojo is Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan) and Zara Malik (Rayna Vallandingham), two real life martial arts masters in roles that couldn’t be more perfect for them.
Tan is the son of Philip Tan, making him a second-generation martial artist and actor. Previously he has starred in martial-themed projects like Into the Badlands and Mortal Kombat.
“It was important to us that [Sensei Wolf] be somebody of substance and of martial art pedigree that can enter this world believably and scarily,” says Heald. “There were very few people who could deliver that.” When they discovered Tan was available and willing to come and play, they pursued him aggressively. “We couldn’t really see it any other way.”
Vallandingham is a 13-time World Champion in Taekwondo. And just like her character Zara, she’s a martial arts influencer with 2.5 million followers on Instagram and 2.3 million on TikTok. “Rayna became kind of a model for that character before we went into production,” says Heald. “We were following her online and thinking, okay, she could potentially come in and nail this.” As an influencer in real life, Vallandingham’s role as Zara went meta. “We were watching it play out in real time on Instagram while writing it,” continues Heald. “At one point, the lines got blurred.”
“I just want to say she is not like Zara at all,” adds Hurwitz, “She’s kind and sweet and game and supportive of everybody. She’s amazing. Oftentimes the sweetest, kindest people do such a great job of playing villainous characters because they get to let loose in a fun way that’s not like them at all.”
The Future of the Franchise
The stage, or perhaps the mat, is set for the Cobra Kai finale, but Netflix has yet to announce a release date for the final five episodes. Nevertheless, the showrunners claim to have many more twists up their sleeves to stick that landing.
“There are scenes in the final few episodes that we’ve been talking about for seven or eight years now. Some of them even longer,” Hurwitz says. “It’s really exciting to be able to finish what we started in a way that has intent as opposed to just being told ‘No more Cobra Kai,’ and the fans are left with an incomplete story.”
Cobra Kai might be ending, but the franchise never dies. Sony has announced Karate Kid: Legends, a feature-length film that will unite Ralph Macchio’s Daniel with Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han from the 2010 reboot that starred Jaden Smith (Will Smith is a producer of Cobra Kai, The Karate Kid reboot, and this upcoming Karate Kid: Legends). Slated for release in May 2025, Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg are not involved with this new project.
“We’re as curious as everybody about that movie,” says Heald. Within the Cobra Kai ‘Miyagi-verse,’ Jackie Chan exists as Jackie Chan, but Mr. Han does not. However, they understand why Sony wants to blend those franchises and are eager to see how this movie goes. “We love Ralph,” adds Heald, “We root for all things Karate Kid.”
And there may be more to come from the Cobra Kai showrunners, but nothing they are able to disclose at this time. “We have so many different ideas for kinds of spinoffs,” says Hurwitz. Some of the ideas they have been spitballing are a deeper exploration of Mr. Miyagi’s past, Johnny Lawrence’s journey down the road, the futures of Tori, Robbie, Miguel, Samantha, the Binary Brothers, and Chozen. “Even new characters like the Iron Dragons,” Hurwitz adds. “We just love playing in this sandbox and hopefully in the wake of Cobra Kai, there will be opportunities to go down different paths.”
Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 2 is now available on Netflix. The final five episodes of Cobra Kai are scheduled for some time in 2025.
The post Cobra Kai Showrunners On Season 6 Cliffhanger, Plans For The Future appeared first on Den of Geek.
