Cobra Kai creators explain fates of Kreese and Silver in season 5 finale
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Warning: This post contains spoilers for all of Cobra Kai season 5.
If you're reading this, you've finished your Cobra Kai season 5 binge and you have questions. (If you haven't finished, STOP READING NOW.)
Some of the questions we found ourselves asking include (but are not limited to): Wait, is Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) truly gone for good? Now that Kreese (Martin Kove) has faked his death yet again, what is his endgame? Will Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) and Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita) find love in season 6? Will Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny (William Zabka) hang out with Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan) again in the future? And is it just me, or is Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) gestating Johnny's baby at an alarmingly fast rate?
As they have every season since the premiere, Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg sat down with EW and patiently answered all of our burning spoiler questions. (Okay, they danced around a few answers, too.) Grab a cold Banquet and some ham and read on.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I'm not ashamed to admit that you faked me out TWICE with the non-death deaths — first with John Kreese and then with Chozen. What kind of debates did you have in the writers' room about whether or not you should actually kill one or both of them?
JON HURWITZ: I think we knew that we were not gonna kill either of them this season. With Kreese, there's a Karate Kid/Cobra Kai tradition for him to fake his own death. This is something that he enjoys doing, apparently. We loved having this arc with Kreese this season where you see him making progress — he's finally getting some therapy that he's needed for a very long time. And you're seeing him change and grow over the course of the season. Was his growth legit or was it just part of this ruse? Maybe it's a little bit of both.
When it comes to Chozen, we have been talking about this Terry Silver/Chozen battle for a while now. Entering the writers' room, I think we thought it might be just a sword fight, but then we altered it to sword versus sais, which made it a little bit more Chozen specific and added an extra flavor to it. We knew that we wanted Silver to emerge from his home victorious there, but we wanted Chozen to have the upper hand. It felt like Chozen had taken him down and if it weren't for being distracted, he wouldn't have been slashed the way that he was. But we wanted to give that feeling that it's a life for death battle with weapons and anything could happen there. Had Johnny not survived his battle with the Fist, then Chozen may have been done for. But luckily, all those guys survived and were able to carry on beyond and hopefully make it to future seasons of the show.
Yuji told us that there was a little bit of a debate in the writers' room — "Will he live? Will he die?" — so did you guys just tell him that to mess with him?
JOSH HEALD: Probably. [Laughs] I think we knew he was going to get very badly injured, and it was a question of how grave it was. But we never thought that that would be the end of Chozen.
When I talked with Thomas, I couldn't help but notice that his hair is short. So… have we seen the last of Terry Silver now that he is been shipped off to jail?
HEALD: I don't think we can comment on whether or not you've seen the last of Silver, just because there's a lot of story left in this universe. As we know, characters come on and off this show and fade into the shadows and then reemerge, from behind cardboard cutouts of themselves at times. [Laughs] It would be premature to count out Terry Silver, even though he's, you know, had such a public takedown. Sure. Um, but what happens in the aftermath of some of these big moments — that's sometimes the meat and potatoes is finding unexpected story in the aftermath of something that feels quite final.
Where did the idea to have Mike Barnes be a reformed bad boy — and a master furniture craftsman — come from?
HAYDEN SCHLOSSBERG: Whenever we're deciding the fate of these characters that we love, we try to stay true to who the character is and also how we could relate to them. With Barnes, we knew that the hardcore fans are going to be thinking in a certain direction with him. We like the idea of being unexpected and surprising. At that point, we had introduced a bunch of characters from the Karate Kid universe all with complicated relationships to their past. We like the idea of a character who has moved on [laughs], who has been able to put that in the rearview mirror and be a better person. He hasn't really thought about it in a while.
But Daniel, he's with the audience, thinking only the worst [of Barnes], and pulling Mike into it was really fun. The other fun thing about the character is that all it takes is one little poke, and then you've got karate's bad boy back ready to fight. We wanted fans to have some of what they love about Barnes, but also some surprises there. We had a great time working with Sean Kanan. He's really funny, and we'll see what happens in the future — he's now in this world and in the consciousness of the main characters.
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Yes, and Chozen, Johnny, and Barnes have a great comedy dynamic — they have similar "kick first, ask questions later" vibes. Will we see more of them next season?
SCHLOSSBERG: Well, I'll say as a fan that may be one of our favorite moments of the entire series — just when Daniel comes out of this stretch limo and all his antagonists from the first three movies, Johnny, Chozen, and Barnes, are all there. And they're drunk or high or whatever, and they just wanna kick Silver's ass. And Daniel is the voice of reason, like, "What are we doing right now? That bizarre kind of Hangover wolf pack foursome was just so much fun to film. Now that that's out there in the ether, I think we'll want to jump back into that.
Speaking of KKIII callbacks, how did you develop the idea that Jessica Andrews was Amanda's cousin — and that she's the person who introduced her to Daniel?
HURWITZ: This came about in the season 5 writers' room. It was not something that we've been thinking this whole time. We've known that we wanted to bring Jessica back. We love the character and we've been in touch with Robyn Lively for a while. She loves the show, and she had mentioned if there was ever something that made sense to the story that she'd be game for coming on. We always had her in mind, and [this idea] really came from a place of thinking about where Daniel was [emotionally] this season, and Daniel and Amanda's relationship in particular.
This is a season where Terry Silver is taking over the valley. And the only person who truly understands what a crazy person Terry Silver is capable of being is Daniel, and it's because of what happened to him as a teenager in Karate Kid III. He has all this trauma from his past that no one could understand, and it gets to the point where Amanda's had enough, and Daniel just seems crazy [to her]. So we thought it would be really fun to see where Amanda came from, and also it would be really helpful for Amanda to get some perspective on what Daniel had been through — and the only person who was there at the time was Jessica.
At that point, we started discussing the potential of finally having somebody be related to somebody. [Laughs] You know the fandom really well, everyone's [always speculating] that everyone's [someone's] father or mother or grandfather. This was something that no one has ever called, no one had ever seen coming, but it made the most sense to us. We never really knew exactly the story of how Amanda and Daniel met. We felt like it would be really amazing if Jessica had her cousin Amanda moving out to L.A. and Amanda's like, "Do you know anyone out there?" "Well, I know this really nice guy, Daniel LaRusso." And that's how it happened.
Robyn was just a complete pleasure to work with, and she and Courtney have very similar energy in real life. They're both just hilarious and fun and up for stuff. And the moment they met each other, it felt like they were related.
Okay, so let's talk about Carmen's pregnancy. She started experiencing morning sickness after being "a couple of days late," and then at her first ultrasound, the baby already looks like 12 weeks along. At this rate, she'll give birth after 4-5 months. Is she a superhero? What's going on?
HEALD: It's quite possible that the visual effects in that scene were, um, overly ambitious. I think my wife, upon first viewing, had the same reaction. Our timeline is so condensed on this show. In reality, there would be nothing to really see [on an ultrasound at that point] beyond maybe a flash of a heartbeat. But we went with a little bit of suspended belief; we wanted to move things a few weeks along there for that moment to have something visual to connect to. So, I don't think she's a superhero with a pregnancy that would last any less than a normal human pregnancy. [Laughs]
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SCHLOSSBERG: You know, the truth is that in the Miyagi-verse, time is not exactly what it is in our universe. If you look at Daniel LaRusso and his age and delve into the logic of when he was able to drive, when he graduated, the two tournaments, everything like that, you start to be like, "Wait a second. Did he graduate at 16 years old?" So, the Miyagi verse has interesting time warp things that allow you to expedite story in short windows.
Fair enough. This season also brought us Kreese in therapy, which is something none of us thought we'd ever see. What was the goal with that scene, and how did you pull off his confrontation with an eerily realistic young Johnny?
SCHLOSSBERG: We love the idea of Kreese in jail having to face his inner demons. There's no escape other than looking in the mirror and having somebody that's trying to reach him. At first, he puts up the shield and tries to bullshit his way through therapy, and then eventually he just has to give in there. We talked to Marty early in the season. We were like, listen, you're not going to be in the first half of the season. We want the audience to almost forget about Kreese for a second, so that when he comes into the story, it has a big impact. Even though you're only in half of the season, that half of the season is going have some of the most dramatic moments and most human moments that Kreese has ever had. And yet all that humanity, he ends up taking advantage of it later [in order] to help him get out.
As for the scene where he's facing all the people from his past, that was an amazing script from Michael Jonathan Smith. We knew that we wanted to get young Johnny in, and Jon can speak to the technical experience of creating young Johnny.
HURWITZ: We knew we wanted to do a deep fake, and we reached out to our post team and said, let's make this happen. It all started with hiring an actor to sit in that chair who had enough of Johnny's facial structure to potentially make it easier for that post team. We got the first cut of it in post, and I, for one, was very nervous. I was very, very concerned that we weren't going to make it look close enough. Hayden was like, "This looks great!" [Laughs]
SCHLOSSBERG: I was fine with the actor, [Logan Coffey]. I thought the actor looked enough like Johnny that I was affected by it, just from that. [Laughs]
HURWITZ: We were very neurotic about it and had many, many [revisions]. We kept dialing it in — the mouth, the eyes, every element of Johnny, we just kept going back and asking for more and more tweaks. It was not just the look of him, but it was also the voice. In the end, we landed on William Zabka doing the lines and [then] working with our sound team to make him sound a little bit younger.
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Was the Cobra Kai jacket the same one from the movie?
HURWITZ: I'm fairly certain it was that jacket. We've used it on the show before. I think Miguel wore it early on.
This season, as you saw with [the therapy scene] and with Sam fighting herself, there were a number of big swings that we took as a show when it came to some style for the directors.
I love that Chozen got addicted to 90 Day Fiancé. Were there any other shows you considered for that scene?
HEALD: That one was in the script and we stuck with it. I think there was a moment that we toyed with the idea of — just to have the Easter egg of it — that maybe he would be watching The Bold and the Beautiful, which Sean Kanan recurs on. But it felt a little too in-world, and there was just something fun about him getting very emotionally connected to a reality series in one day. And he played it so beautifully. I mean, he's acting against nothing on the TV screen until we put it in post, so it's another testament to Yuji's comedic prowess.
Speaking of Chozen and romance, the revelation that he's in love with Kumiko and has been this whole time was so sweet — and his voicemail to her was amazing. Please tell me that we'll follow Chozen on his unrequited love journey with Kumiko next season?
HEALD: Well, we never leave story just hanging there just for the sake of it. We can't comment on exactly where we're going, but we are guys who love setups and payoffs. We sometimes put things on a path without knowing exactly what's going to come next, and sometimes we put things on a path because we know the next 12 things that come next. Without getting into exactly where we're taking the story from here, what you've seen so far is something that we really love and really enjoy talking about.
It seems like we're building to a big Sekai Takei tournament moment in season 6. Beyond that, how many more seasons of Cobra Kai would you like to do?
HURWITZ: We don't want to say anything official right now other than we have talked about — from the very beginning — where we've wanted to land the characters. We've also publicly stated that during the course of this process, we've just fallen in love with this world and these characters and we never want it to end. [Laughs] But we're staying true to our original thoughts of where we're going and how much longer will be a question mark for now.
There are ways, and you see it with other shows and other franchises, of being able to play within this universe, get those Karate Kid vibes and feels out there in different ways. That in our minds is like, okay, how do we land these characters in an awesome place? And how could we continue to play with some of these action figures in different ways beyond that?
Like spin-offs?
HURWITZ: Yeah, things like that. Every option is on the table. It's a special piece of entertainment that we're connected to. And now, even more than five years ago, we are dying to explore more. Sometimes on the show that we have, there's only so much you can do with all the characters in a half-hour format, so there may be different ways to play in this universe. We talk about all that stuff, but the focus right now is Cobra Kai and these characters.
Anthony's video game skills and strategy ended up serving him well in the protect the egg challenge and during the final fight. Will we get to see him kick some karate butt next season?
SCHLOSSBERG: Anything's possible with Anthony. We always love writing to character, so when we were working on the protect the egg challenge, we knew that was going to be Anthony coming up big. We were like, "How does he figure things out that others have not?" And it is his video game knowledge that served him well. Like you said, he was a novice student. He he's only been training for a short while. But as you've seen in the Karate Kid movies and in Cobra Kai, you can learn karate, like, really quickly. [Laughs] It goes back to what Hayden was saying about time in this universe. Anthony has a little bit of the karate bug right now and we'll see where it's going to take him.
In terms of the broader Miyagi-verse, the only key character we haven't seen is The Next Karate Kid herself, Julie Pierce. To that end, when did you start discussions with Hillary Swank?
HEALD: [Laughs] I like your phrasing. We've made no secret out of the fact that we love The Karate Kid, and we love all the movies, and we love existing in this world. If you look at our track record so far, we've brought back a ton of people. Where our story goes from here, and when and if Julie Pierce makes an appearance, we're going to keep very close to the vest at this point.
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