As Cobra Kai wraps its final season, with the last five episodes now streaming on Netflix, the series’s creators reflected on what the show has meant for viewers of all generations.
“That’s the really cool thing about making Cobra Kai […] its multigenerational audiences,” the series’ co-creator Hayden Schlossberg told Yahoo Entertainment at the Saturn Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 2. “You have the Gen X-ers who grew up with these characters, and then you have the Gen Z, Gen Alpha … the next-gen kids, and you see the joy in their faces — of the adults — that they get to watch something that they like with their kids, and their kids like it.”
Cobra Kai first launched on YouTube in 2018, before moving to the streamer in 2020. Schlossberg, along with his co-creators Josh Heald and Jon Hurwitz, wanted to continue the story about the karate rivals, played by Ralph Macchio and William Zabka in the original 1984 Karate Kid film. (While Macchio appeared in the 1986 and 1989 Karate Kid sequels as Danny LaRusso, Zabka only appeared in the second film as Johnny Lawrence.)
Trusted news and daily delights, right in your inbox
See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories.
For their spin-off series, the Cobra Kai creators focus on the character of Zabka, a former bad guy who reunites with Macchio’s character and runs his own dojo, becoming a sensei to a new crop of karate kids.
“So often you’re watching something, and you’re kind of putting your brain in a certain mindset to watch something that your kid is gonna like,” Schlossberg said. “This is something that you might watch without your kid, but your kid’s into it too, so you see how fun that is for parents and children alike.”
Coming from “hard R-rated comedy” as the writer for films like Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Schlossberg said that Cobra Kai was a “change of pace,” but added that bringing this story to multiple generations has “been one of the most rewarding parts.”
Xolo Maridueña, who plays Miguel Diaz in the series, told Yahoo Entertainment at the event that Zabka and Macchio are “two of the most gentlemanly people I know.” He says he’s “so appreciative that the success of the show has happened to them, because nobody deserves it more than them.”
“We’ve been doing this for seven years. I can’t help but feel like, ‘Oh shoot, I really want to knock this out of the park for them.’ It’s been seven years for me, but it’s been since ’84 for them,” he added.
While another Karate Kid movie, Karate Kid: Legends, will hit big screens in May, with Macchio starring alongside Jackie Chan, the Cobra Kai creators have said they’d be interested in making a prequel involving the backstory of mentor Mr. Miyagi (played by the late Pat Morita in the original films).
“There’s nothing definitive that we can say or can’t say about that, other than that remains an important piece of our fever-dream continuation of this universe and this franchise,” Heald told Yahoo Entertainment UK earlier this month.
