‘Cobra Kai’ Stars Tease an ‘Unexpected, Uplifting’ Finale as the Show Prepares to End Its Six-Season Run
As “Cobra Kai” gets ready to drop its final five episodes early next year, stars Ralph Macchio and William Zabka promised that the show will end on a thrilling note for fans. Speaking at a panel on the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot, Macchio and Zabka — along with the “Cobra Kai” executive producers — hinted that the explosive ending of Season 6’s Episode 10 sets the stage for a whirlwind last batch of episodes.
“You need to hit the bottom to come back up, and that’s kind of where we are,” Macchio said. “I’m very excited. It is set up to embrace that big ’80s movie ending that I have a feeling we will find and go forward. It feels right to land the plane, ‘Cobra Kai’ proper… [and that] this chapter is ending.”
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Season 6 was split into three segments, with the first batch of five episodes premiering in July and the second part dropping earlier this month. As Part 3 of Season 6 lands on Feb. 13, 2025, Zabka agreed that it was “the right time to end it and the right way to end it. [The producers] stick the landing in a way that’s unexpected, uplifting, and honest…It’s a great ending for everybody and we’re so thankful we had six seasons to get to tell the whole story.”
Part 2 of “Cobra Kai” Season 6 ended with perhaps its most shocking moment yet — an unexpected death in the middle of a global karate tournament that stuns everyone, including the show’s villains John Kreese and Terry Silver.
“We wanted to make it unpredictable going forward,” said Jon Hurwitz, who serves as executive producer along with Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg. “What does it mean? That is the question. We have all these characters that we’ve been following for all these years and this tournament meant so much to all of them in all these different ways. And then it ends like this. So we have five episodes left to figure out, are they going to pick up the pieces? Is the tournament going to go back on? How do these characters react to what just happened?”
Hurwitz said the death wasn’t done just for shock value. “It was all based on where our characters were and where we are sending our characters going forward as we land the ship,” he said.
Episode 10’s massive fight sequence was perhaps the largest the show had ever done, an epic example of how the show has continually tried to top itself. “It was a painstaking effort in line with our director, Sherwin Shilati,” Heald said. “And in the writer’s room, making sure that every punch, every kick, every time the camera moves has to be motivated. We can’t just have background performer number three coming in and punching somebody. We have to set that up in previous episodes to even get to that place. You have to care about all of these little mini moments and not just the full-on, crazy two-on-ones.”
The series has also been a culmination of the long-evolving relationship between Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence — a rivalry that began 40 years ago in “The Karate Kid.” Schlossberg said he, Heald and Hurwitz have worked hard to add multiple dimensions in all these characters, including taking villainous characters and flipping things on their heads to see them in a different light.
“Johnny Lawrence was the antagonist in the original ‘Karate Kid’ and now you’re rooting for him,” he said. “We really get in the head of all of our characters including the villains. It’s so much fun in the writer’s room, we’re always talking about how do you up the stakes but also keep it real. And you’ll see in the last five episodes we bring it to a next level, but it’s going to ultimately hit home in a real relatable way.”
As “Cobra Kai” winds down, Zabka said the experience of revisiting a character from his youth has been a “delightful surprise.” “As an actor, to get to play a character so three dimensional and heartfelt and funny and all those things, that’s what you sign up for when you do this,” he said. “You want to make an impact on somebody. The fact that it’s tied into ‘Karate Kid’ and has all these great themes and the fan base and all that just makes it surreal.”
Macchio, of course, isn’t done with Daniel LaRusso just yet: He’ll next be seen reviving the character opposite Jackie Chan in next year’s feature “Karate Kid: Legends.”
“I’ve walked the streets in these shoes for 40 plus years. And so I always talk about honesty and truth in the character, and that’s always what I’m looking for,” he said. “I just want to know where the character landed. I’ll jump through the hoops and wear the face paint and jump off the cliff and punch Johnny in the face. If it services his narrative, it’s cool. But where does it land? And that’s where the comfort was because we were always working toward the same goal. And that’s because [the producers] care. They care so much about these original films and these characters. And that’s why we have the richness in our performances and in the storytelling.”
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