The phrase “Cobra Kai never dies” may soon have a whole new meaning. Though only the first third of the final season of the Netflix Karate Kid spinoff is out, the show’s creators are already exploring ways to continue the franchise. This much we already reported. But now we know one of the specific stories they’re considering, and it’s highly intriguing.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Cobra Kai co-creator Hayden Schlossberg revealed that this season’s teases about the past of Mr. Miyagi, the teacher from the original Karate Kid films played by Pat Morita, are a hint at what might be to come. “It is one of the reasons why we did the Miyagi box story this season,” he said. “It opens up all these questions about Mr. Miyagi and what his life was like, and that’s been something we’ve been wanting to do for a while. We’ve talked to Robert Mark Kamen, the writer of the original Karate Kid who based this whole movie off his sensei who studied Okinawan karate; we’ve been talking about all this Miyagi backstory with him, which helped us with season six stuff. Now that we’re done, we can actually start getting into this stuff.”
And by “getting into this stuff,” did Schlossberg mean a potential Mr. Miyagi prequel show? “I would say that we definitely want to do that and have been talking about that,” he continued. “But the focus has been on Cobra Kai. As we’re finishing that up, we’ll see exactly what path we take in terms of spinoffs, but it is definitely something that we’ve been wanting to do. It’s just that we want to wait until we get finished with Cobra Kai first before we get into that.”
Out of all The Karate Kid movie characters who’ve been a part of Cobra Kai, Mr. Miyagi is certainly the one we’ve learned the least about. In large part that’s because Morita passed away in 2005, and the show honored that by having the character also be deceased. But Schlossberg, who created Cobra Kai with Jon Hurwitz and Josh Heald, also knows that any exploration of Miyagi could reframe not just Cobra Kai, but the original movies too. It’s a delicate subject but one that, if it happens, could be very interesting.
The second third of Cobra Kai’s final season is coming in November. See the first batch of episodes here.
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