For your reading pleasure, please enjoy this free excerpt from our 2500 word interview with showrunners Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald about their Cobra Kai season 3 experience from Backstory’s brand new issue #44!
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Cobra Kai
Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald show no mercy as the series moves to Netflix for Season 3
By David Somerset
SPOILER ALERT: This article divulges major character and plot points from season three
Back in 2017 when Cobra Kai co-creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald were first pitching their ambitious, faithful yet funny TV series continuation of the Karate Kid story around Hollywood, Netflix showed some early interest, eagerly looking to pick it up. Then along came YouTube, which was getting into the original programming game with their YouTube Red service (later changed to YouTube Premium). In a move that would earn an appreciative nod from tough-nut original Cobra Kai dojo owner John Kreese (Martin Kove), the YouTube team swept the leg of any other potential deals, promising a big budget and healthy marketing support. The first two seasons of the series, picking up long after the goings-on of the big-screen franchise, found William Zabka’s onetime bully Johnny Lawrence down on his luck, while his former rival, the Mr. Miyagi-trained Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) was flourishing with a chain of car dealerships and both men were still tied to the karate that steered their formative years. Fans new and old flocked to YouTube, and the show became the platform’s biggest streaming success.
After season three cleared to begin production, a twist worthy of the show itself occurred. “We were in the middle of editing when we got that call from Susan Daniels at YouTube, saying, ‘I’ve never had to make a call like this before. This is a hit show—we love it, and the world loves it, but we’re not making shows anymore,” recalls Hurwitz. Though YouTube remained committed to showing the new season, Team Cobra Kai had felt the way the wind was blowing while they were still shooting, watching as other YouTube series were canceled around them. They asked if, instead of a planned return to the service, the trio could find their show a new home. And given Cobra Kai’s early success and healthy fan base, it would have seemed to be an easy process…except for the small matter of a worldwide pandemic.
“The world shut down, the town shut down. We were in this limbo for a period of time,” says Hurwitz. And then came streaming behemoth Netflix once again hungry for quality content. “We had a whole season ready to go, and everyone was looking for it, so it was a blessing to be able to bring it over to Netflix not only for us to continue the show but for it to reach the audience we intended from the beginning, an audience that was able to enjoy this kind of show during the time we were all experiencing.” Cue pop-culture sensation status. Not that the huge surge in popularity ever changed how the writer-producers-directors behind Cobra Kai worked. Heald teases about their attitude toward the shift. “We were pretty much just phoning it in before. Now it’s time to buckle down and scratch our heads and figure out, ‘God, we should really think about the writing now,” he jokes, then gets serious. “We knew that whether it was a year or 10 years from now, somebody’s going to discover this show, and we will have life breathed into it. You want to put your best representation forward, so getting to Netflix and discovering that wider audience we always suspected would be there––I think we’ve just begun to see how big this show can potentially get. It was validating, but it didn’t add any pressure. We were just happy we could do the hard work to be seen and appreciated.”
Cobra Kai’s narrative, for anyone who has yet to see it, finds Johnny still hard-hearted as he reopens the Cobra Kai dojo and trains students with the nefarious mantra he was taught: “Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy!” Daniel, in response, gathers his own students and begins imparting the benevolent athleticism he learned from the ever wise Mr. Miyagi (the late, great Pat Morita). Around the two revolves a group of teenagers, including Johnny’s protégé, Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña); Daniel’s daughter, Samantha (Mary Mouser); and Johnny’s estranged son, Robby (Tanner Buchanan), as well as a recurring cast of karate pupils, old friends and enemies on both sides. Teen drama, class clashes and what the creators like to refer to as “karate opera” all weaves together in a successful tapestry that has enough nostalgic power for fans of the original Karate Kid movies while never turning away newcomers who don’t know their wax-on from their wax-off. Cobra Kai is by turns dramatic, funny and heartfelt, and now season three finds it nominated for its first primetime nod as Best Comedy Series and a clutch of Creative Arts Emmys [stunts, sound mixing and sound editing]. This is all a little ironic, as the third season goes to some of the darkest places Cobra Kai has explored. Last season ended in a chaotic giant fracas between the rival dojos that tore through the local high school. The battle left Miguel lying comatose in a hospital bed, facing the prospect of permanent paralysis if he wakes up, while Robby––who put him there––remains ashamed of what he’s done and worried about the criminal consequences. Sam is dealing with PTSD after rival Tory (Peyton List) attacked her with a spiked weapon during the same school rumble. Daniel and Johnny, both shocked by what their various students have done, step away from the karate world while the school authorities and civic council are cracking down.
It’s all very The Empire Strikes Back—and exactly the point the creators wanted to reach, with the third season exploring how everyone reacts and recovers. “In season three, there’s a lot of figuring out of what went wrong for a lot of the characters. Johnny and Daniel have the best of intentions. They believe they’re sharing something wonderful, these skills that they possess, and that they can help these kids defend themselves, but it resulted in a horrible brawl,” Hurwitz says. “We put ourselves in a position where everyone has to build themselves back up. One thing we love about this show is that we just try to reflect life. Sometimes you have amazing times and it’s silly and fun, and other times there is tragedy that you have to work through. I will say we have a room full of comedy writers working on the show. We all come from a comedy background, so we’re always looking for those light moments throughout, but we come from a school of entertainment that, frankly, started with a lot of our favorite dramas. Whether it’s Sopranos or Breaking Bad, those shows are dramatic, but there is comedy in them.” The story for season three also finds characters coming together in unexpected ways as allegiances shift. And Kreese’s dark influence increases at Cobra Kai, while his harrowing, life-altering Vietnam experience is explored for the first time in the canon via flashbacks.
As for dealing with the consequences of the melee, the writing team approached these storylines quite differently. Miguel’s injury is given the weight it requires initially, until he slowly starts to heal under the recuperative “expertise” of a guilty Johnny Lawrence. What follows is an unconventional treatment plan based around magazine centerfolds, a harness and a Dee Snider concert. “There was a method to the madness with Johnny’s approach in his own misguided kind of way, and it was fun to find the comedy in that,” says Heald. “And for Miguel tapping his foot for the first time at a Dee Snider concert, it’s perhaps not what the doctor would prescribe, but there was something to be said for taking your mind off of everything that might open a window there. With Johnny, it’s the balance of him doing something ridiculous but having some reason for it.” Sam’s storyline, though, is treated almost completely straight, as the young woman has nightmares about Tory attacking her, and it crucially affects her ability to fight back at times. “With Sam, we didn’t think there was anything funny about what she’s going through, and she’s dealing with legitimate trauma there. It was, ‘Let’s deal with these issues in as authentic a way as we can.’ ”
That’s not to say season three is all doom and gloom. There was a chance for the show to expand out of its usual Georgia production home and take a trip to Okinawa, the setting for 1986’s The Karate Kid Part II. While the movie used Hawaii to stand in for the Japanese city, Cobra Kai employed a blend of Atlanta locations and an actual short shoot in Japan in 2019 with a skeleton crew and Macchio in tow. It’s all to service an emotional storyline wherein Daniel, faced with losing business connections in Japan—a critical part of his car dealership—travels to Okinawa to confront the board. Once overseas, he reconnects with old flame Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita) and former Miyagi family nemesis Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), who ends up imparting some wisdom––and fresh skills––to our hero. “We wanted to keep Okinawa alive, and it was always the Miyagi story that we were telling,” says Hurwitz. “But it was really figuring out how we get there without saying, ‘Hey, let’s take a fun family vacation, and here are the episodes where we do that.’ I don’t think anybody would expect the car dealership rivalry storyline to give you the springboard that would send Daniel back to Miyagi’s homeland. But that’s what we did.”
Hurwitz, Schlossberg and Heald were consistently careful to consult with the actors playing these people who come back into Daniel’s life, looking to make sure they nailed the nuances and developed both Kumiko and Chozen into even more rounded characters. “Tamlyn [herself born in Okinawa] brought a lot of Okinawan artifacts that we incorporated into our production design to make sure we were leading with authenticity at every option, given the scale of our production,” Hurwitz says. “And Yuji challenged us to think of Chozen in some different ways, not just a ‘Johnny Lawrence across the pond.’ You realize you’re speaking the same language, but it becomes more cohesive because there’s such a history there. It was wonderful to be able to play with those characters and those storylines and do it in a way that didn’t feel like we were saying, ‘And now we’re doing this.’ ”
–End of Free Excerpt – another 1,100 words await you in the full article in issue 44!
In the rest of the article you’ll learn what it took to bring back Allie Mills (Elisabeth Shue) and insights about creating John Kreese’s Vietnam flashbacks and more!
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