The first part of the sixth and final season Cobra Kai Though it premiered on Netflix this week, we’ll have to wait four months to see what happens next. In the meantime, io9 is wrapping up our spoiler-filled interview series with the show’s creators, Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg.
Specifically, we asked them what’s in store for parts two and three of the final season, and how that influenced the pivotal choice made in part one that determined which six characters would travel across the globe to compete in the World Championships. Read on for those answers and more.
Germain Lussier, io9: So you decided that the reunion competition would have six people from Miyagi-do. It could have been any number, but you chose six. And obviously, the show emphasizes the fact that four of them are fixed. So can you tell us a little bit about why six and the discussion of who the final two will be?
Jon Hurwitz: The reason we ended up with six people is because we wanted a significant number of our team members to participate in the Saikai Tournament, and when we started thinking about what kind of event we wanted to do, we thought it would be fun if we had different characters. [for] We wanted to have drama off the mat with the characters, not just what happens on the mat. We had a core of four people who were probably going to go – Miguel, Robby, Tori and Sam – and we wanted to invent a captain role or something like that to add drama to it. Sometimes in the writers’ room we would talk about scenarios where one of the four doesn’t go at first, but then they end up there. We discussed a lot of different things.
But one of the fun things about, say, the fourth episode of these first five episodes is that we get to focus on the Devon family, the Kenny family, the Anthony family — Demitri, Hawk, the characters in this world — because they all have elements of themselves that, personality-wise, karate-wise, that allow them to go to the West Sea Tournament for some reason. And it was fun to create a different kind of tournament than we’ve seen with them before. And then, ultimately, I liked the idea of Hawk not going to go for a while, but then he gets his chance. And I also liked the idea of Devon making a mistake, doing something that doesn’t suit him, and seeing where that leads us. And then Anthony and Kenny are left in the valley, holding the sack, and seeing what happens to them.
But really, it was all about looking at all the characters and storylines that we wanted to develop over the season and thinking, “Who do we want here? Who do we want there? And what are some interesting storylines for those characters?”
io9: Can you talk a little bit about what’s coming up in parts two and three of season six?
Hurwitz: Part 2, finally the world championships. The Western Seas Championships will feature a tournament like you’ve never seen before. Karate Boy Movies and Cobra Kaiit’s a lot of fun. 6 fighters [Miyagi-Do] You get to know fighters from all over the world, which is very exciting for us. Everybody is looking at the internal conflict of who is going to be in this tournament. We know that Cobra Kai is going to be there, but they’re not the only dojo that’s going to be in this tournament. So it’s going to be really exciting to watch the level of karate that we’re going to show in this tournament and the type of events that are going to be there. And, you know, there’s a lot of fighting on the mat, but there’s also a lot of drama off the mat, as there always is on the show. So we’re looking forward to that.
And the last five are not just for the sake of concluding Cobra Kai As a series, however, it goes back a long way. Karate Boy It’s a movie. It’s a resolution for a lot of the characters, and it’s also a new beginning in a lot of ways. And I think for fans of the series, the last five episodes are going to be really fun and fulfilling. Whether you’ve been a fan for the last few years or you’ve been a fan for 40 years, the last five episodes are going to be really fun.
Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 1 Now available on Netflix.
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