Cobra Kai creators talk spoilers and upcoming season 6 teasers

The first part of the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai debuted on Netflix this week, and yes, you’ll have to wait four months to see what comes next. In the meantime, io9 concludes our series of interviews with show creators Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg with some spoilers.

We asked specifically what’s in store for parts two and three of the final season, and what went into part one’s pivotal choice of which six characters would travel the world to join the Saikai Taikai. Read those answers and more below.

Germain Lussier, io9: So for Saikai Taikai, you decided that six people from Miyagi-Do would go. It could have been any number, but you chose six. And of course the show relies on the fact that four of them are kind of stuck. So tell me a little bit about why the number is six and the debate about who those last two would be.

Jon Hurwitz: We made six because we thought we wanted to have a fair number of our team members actually at Saikai Taikai. And when we started thinking about the types of events we wanted to have, we thought it would be fun to have different characters there — not just (for) the on-mat stuff, but also the drama that we wanted to have off-mat with our characters. You know, there were the core four that you would expect to go, which were Miguel, Robbie, Tori, and Sam. And we wanted to play around with the captain roles and those kinds of elements to create some additional drama there. There were times in the writers’ room where we talked about scenarios where one of those four doesn’t go initially and then maybe ends up there or whatever. We debated a wide range of things.

But part of the fun of, say, episode four in these first five is focusing on the Devons and the Kennys and Anthonys—Demetri, Hawk, those characters of the world, because they’re all, there’s an element that could make them viable to show up at the Saikai Taikai for whatever reason, for character reasons, for karate reasons. And it was fun to be able to create a different kind of competition than what you’ve seen with them before. And when it came down to it, we liked the idea of ​​Hawk not being involved for a little bit, but then an opportunity opening up for him. And we liked the idea of ​​Devon making a mistake and doing something that wasn’t quite right for her and seeing where that takes us. And then Anthony and Kenny are left in the Valley, holding the bag, and we’ll see what happens with those guys.

But it was really about taking all the characters, the storylines that you want them to go through over the course of the season, and figuring out, “Okay, who do we want here? Who do we want there? And what’s the juicy story for the characters?”

io9: What can you already reveal about the episodes of parts two and three of season six?

Hurwitz: Part Two—We’re finally at that world tournament. We’re at the Saikai Taikai and you’re going to see a tournament unlike any other you’ve ever seen in the Karate child movies or on Cobra Kaiwhich is really fun. You have your six fighters from (Miyagi-Do) and you get to meet fighters from all over the world. And that’s really exciting for us. Everyone is so focused on the internal conflict of who’s actually going to this tournament and we know Cobra Kai is going to be there, but they’re not the only dojos in this competition. So it’s going to be really exciting for people to see the level of karate that we have in that tournament and the types 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 excited about that.

And then, you know, for the last five it’s not just a matter of closing Cobra Kai as a series, but it goes all the way back to the Karate child movies. It’s a resolution for a lot of these characters and also a new beginning for them in different ways. And it’s going to be a really fun, fulfilling last five episodes, I think, for fans of this franchise. If you’ve been a fan for a couple of years now, or if you’ve been a fan for 40 years, you’re in for a real treat in the last five.

Cobra Kai season six, part one is now on Netflix.

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