Cobra Kai Creators on Ending, Mr. Miyagi AI and Future of Netflix ...

SPOILER ALERT:The final five episodes of “Cobra Kai” are now streaming on Netflix.

Cobra Kai never dies, but Netflix’s popular karate action series has sadly come to an end.

After premiering back in 2018 on YouTube Red, a streaming service that doesn’t exist anymore, “Cobra Kai” has closed out its story after six seasons, 65 episodes — having survived dual Hollywood strikes and the jump to Netflix.

After years of striking hard, striking first and showing no mercy, every “Cobra Kai” character got a satisfying conclusion by the end of the five final episodes in Season 6 Part 3. The worldwide Sekai Taikai tournament, which was halted after the accidental death of Cobra Kai’s Kwon (Brandon H. Lee), is back on, much to the joy of Daniel (Ralph Macchio), Johnny (William Zabka) and their students.

The championship matches come down to the Iron Dragons, run by the dirty Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan), and Cobra Kai, now led by Johnny after he and a redeemed Kreese (Martin Kove) had an emotional heart-to-heart. Tory (Peyton List) beats Zara (Rayna Valladingham) to claim the girls championship, and the boys final comes down to Axel (Patrick Luwis) and Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), who replaced an injured Robby (Tanner Buchanan). Miguel is victorious but, in another twist, Cobra Kai and the Iron Dragons are tied in final points, meaning their teachers must battle to determine the winner. The last fight comes full circle as Johnny prevails over Wolf and finally becomes a champion, more than 40 years after losing to Daniel in “The Karate Kid.”

In the end, Johnny gets on the cover of Sports Illustrated and buys a house for his growing family; he and Daniel finally become actual friends and teach offense and defense to new Cobra Kai students; Robby and Tory become karate spokespeople; and Sam (Mary Mouser) goes off to Okinawa on an exchange program, but not before Miguel puts off moving to Palo Alto for Stanford to travel with her for a few weeks.

Speaking with Variety, creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg break down the final episodes, their cameos and what’s next for the “Cobra Kai” universe. They also discuss how they recreated Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi for the standout episode “Skeletons,” which sees Daniel fight literal, and metaphorical, skeletons from his past alongside his deceased mentor.

Looking back to when you created the show back in 2018 for YouTube Red, was this always the ending you envisioned?

Josh Heald: This is the ending we wanted to build up to. That’s not to say every word of dialogue and every character who’s on screen for the last episode was firmly in our heads — that would be insane to keep that much story in there — but in terms of the the big story beats, themes, moments, the way that Johnny lands, the way Daniel resolves, all those big feelings, we had that plan in our heads. We didn’t want the plane to take off without knowing how we were going to land it. We could not have foreseen the Sekai Taikai and all its twists and turns, but we’re thrilled that we got the chance to deliver our goals, which was to end this the way that we always intended.

What was the most emotional sendoff or final episode to film?

Hayden Schlossberg: There are so many, because we’ve become so attached to these characters and the actors over six seasons. All of these big climactic scenes were emotional. The one that stands out to me is the scene between Johnny and Kreese, where they have this intense talk and Johnny airs out all his grievances and Kreese apologizes. You see this student who wants to forgive and can’t forgive, but at least can accept the fact that Kreese gave him certain qualities that he does like. That allows him to move on and be able to take back Cobra Kai. That is such an intense scene, and the fact that these are two actors that have been in this relationship on camera for 40 years added to the intensity of the moment. It makes it such a visceral scene for fans, where you see Johnny crying and the teenager in him comes out. It feels so real, and just being there while we were shooting that was emotional for everyone.

Johnny still has his brash, non-PC sense of humor to the very end — he even calls a new Cobra Kai student Four Eyes. Did you always want him to go through this personal journey but maintain his same sense of humor?

Jon Hurwitz: 100%. Johnny Lawrence is Johnny Lawrence till the end, but he’s a more evolved version. That’s where we were looking to go. We didn’t want him to suddenly be Mr. Nice Guy and soft. He’s still a badass. He’s still gonna tell it like it is, but we now understand that it’s coming from a good place. When he’s calling him Four Eyes, that’s part of the training in a sense that he views is not going to scar this kid. It’s going to make him stronger to become a better version of himself. That final scene was one of the those moments where we were getting chills on set. As fans of the show ourselves, those early episodes where Johnny was in that dojo, there were so many great feelings that we had as viewers watching him instruct a class like that. But now we see a Johnny Lawrence who’s finally wrangled the beast that is Cobra Kai, and those words on the wall to be the best version of them — and he’s now the best version of himself.

In the final episode, Johnny teaches a new definition of Cobra Kai’s motto “Strike Hard. Strike First. No Mercy” that’s about bringing out the best in his students and pushing them. How did you land on that new meaning?

Heald: We had every type of discussion you could imagine about the Cobra Kai credo. “Does it change? Is it there at all? Is it something new? Does it evolve?” We landed where we landed because it felt the most authentic to Cobra Kai. This show wasn’t about Cobra Kai, in and of itself, changing. It was about the person who’s teaching those lessons, wielding its power and teaching everybody in that room what it means and interpreting it for them. We didn’t want to leave this world in a way where we’re saying this is wrong. We’re saying there are actions that are wrong. Words are words, and they’re meant to inspire. If you can look at them the right way, you have an opportunity to be your most powerful self. We arrived at that after gaming every possibility out.

We saw Mr. Miyagi return in Part 2, but now we see him fight alongside Daniel. How did you find the right body double to play Mr. Miyagi?

Hurwitz: That was actually Don Lee, our fight choreographer. He’s built similarly to Pat Morita. He’s a little bit thinner than Pat was, so he had to put a pillow up his shirt. Don has been this amazing member of our team. You’ve seen the fight choreography we have on this show, and it was Don’s greatest honor to be able to portray one of his greatest heroes. Before the season, we talked with Ralph about things that he would want to see in this final season. He knew that we were telling the story of Daniel wrestling with his memories Miyagi and learning some new things about him. Ralph loved the idea of he and Pat sharing screen time together again with the new technologies that we have. We loved the idea of Daniel needing his final lesson from Miyagi. Miyagi comes to him and they fight alongside one another and he gives some final words of wisdom that help Daniel move on.

How did you create the look of Mr. Miyagi’s face so it wouldn’t have that uncanny valley effect?

Schlossberg: You just keep at it. You see each version evolve, and it gets less disturbing and horrific each time. Those first ones are very dispiriting, and you’re like, “Oh my God, did we go down the wrong path here?” But they assure you that it’s going to be horrible until it’s not, basically. We felt in the back of our minds that these are dream sequences and give us a little bit of leeway in terms of being super exact. We feel this way about visual effects and special special effects in general: You have the budget that you have, you do the best job that you can and you’re hoping the audience suspends their disbelief. They know what we’re going for here. We know story-wise it’s the right move, and you try to take advantage of the technology that you have.

Did you use any archival footage or AI to recreate him?

Heald: There’s no archival footage in there. We shot Don, the fight and the entrance practically. So that existed in camera. There’s a VFX company that has a deepfake technology. They start producing it, and we give a lot of notes. “The forehead here — look at Pat, look at this.” We’re looking at reference photos. “Here’s Mr. Miyagi at night from ‘The Karate Kid,’ the way his body moves, the way the light and the moon are.” You’re getting really micro, down to the way that the head is shaped and the hair sits on the head. We went through 50 iterations and then we bring in a voice-soundalike actor to deliver the lines and emote like Pat Morita might and like we remembered. Then you apply an AI filter that uses archival audio from Pat Morita to get that voice dialed as close as possible. At the end of the day, you’re not actually recreating a person. We’re paying homage to a hero, and you’re trying to get as close as possible, while the audience knows that obviously he’s not really there.

Josh and Jon, you both appear in a scene at the very end where you’re playing producers discussing making a “Back to the Future” TV show. How did you decide to put yourselves in the show?

Heald: Gratuitously, Jon and I were looking to do a little something in the show. Hayden ingeniously cast himself as Terry Silver’s attorney. We were looking at a way of doing something that didn’t interfere with the plot in a big way or draw too much focus. Since we were doing this scene where we see a little slice of new life in the Valley with these two new best friends Johnny and Daniel — let’s go to Best Friend restaurant and see other friends talking. Since we’re in LA, they can be producers and they can be talking about an inspired revisiting of an ’80s property. It was very meta for those two characters to be having that kind of discussion within the context of this show.

The “Karate Kid: Legends” movie is coming to theaters this summer and will include Ralph Macchio as Daniel. But will that really be the end of the “Karate Kid” and “Cobra Kai” universe?

Heald: We have plans to overstay our welcome in this universe, as much as they’ll let us. There’s nothing official we can talk about yet, but we’ve never stopped talking about how to continue to evolve stories within this universe with both Sony and Netflix. We will continue to have those conversations until there’s something to speak about in an official capacity. Cobra Kai never dies, but the series “Cobra Kai” is ending. This is the finale of the mothership, but that’s not to say we’re never going to see these people again.

This interview has been edited and condensed.