Cobra Kai co-creator says it’s important to tarnish Mr Miyagi’s memory

Watch: Cobra Kai co-creator Hayden Schlossberg speaks about Mr Miyagi's legacy

It seems almost heretical to call the saintly Mr Miyagi’s integrity into question, but Season 6 of Cobra Kai does exactly that. It’s for good reason.

“It all comes from a place of the characters on the show and what kind of conflicts they could be going through,” co-creator Hayden Schlossberg tells Yahoo UK. "We know that for Daniel, who is one of the main characters on the show, one of the big overall storylines that we’ve been following with him is him filling that Miyagi role to a new generation of kids. In doing so, he’s constantly thinking, 'Am I doing a good job?'"

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Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) has always looked up to Mr Miyagi, who was not only his mentor but also a father figure, in the absence of his biological dad who died when Danny was eight years old. When their paths first crossed in the original 1984 film, Danny had moved from New Jersey to Reseda in Los Angeles with his mother and found himself struggling to fit in and at the mercy of bullies, including one Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka).

Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita) was instrumental in helping Danny to overcome the obstacles in his way and remained the single largest influence in his life. Any stain on that memory is bound to be earth-shattering for LaRusso.

In the most recent trailer for the Netflix show's first part of Season 6, we see Danny, his wife Amanda (Courtney Henggeler), and Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) open a secret hidden box of Miyagi’s, holding a host of secrets that will be explored in the upcoming series.

“All he knows about Miyagi is the Miyagi he knew when he was younger and one of the things we’ve learned as we get older, you get to know your parents and your parents’ generation in a much more detailed way, and you start to see things from their perspective,” explains Schlossberg.

“When you’re young, they’re just this god-like mentor that you take instruction from and as you get older they become more humanised. With that comes learning more about their potential flaws.”

For Schlossberg, and his co-creators Josh Heald and Jon Hurwitz, throwing Mr Miyagi’s background into question is also about forcing Daniel to look at himself in the mirror.

“We liked the idea of Daniel finding out stuff about Mr Miyagi … he doesn’t know the whole story but what he learns doesn’t necessarily sound good,” continues Schlossberg.

“Any sort of tarnish on this mentor is going to affect his own confidence in terms of instilling this philosophy to the next generation. So, we liked the idea of giving Daniel that internal conflict to be dealing with in this final season.”

As for what it is that Mr Miyagi has been trying to conceal all these years, we’ll have to watch to find out.

Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 1 premieres on Netflix on Thursday, 18 July.