‘Cobra Kai’ Co-Creator Breaks Down How Shocking ‘Karate Kid’ Cameo Was Possible

The following article contains spoilers for Cobra Kai Season 6.

Cobra Kai co-creator and producer Josh Heald, explains how they managed to include what is probably the most important cameo in the nostalgia-driven series that has plenty of appearances by noteworthy characters from the franchise. With a little bit of AI and a few authorizations, the producers ended up giving fans something to gasp about in the finale of Season 6 Part 2, which landed on Netflix a few days ago.

If you’re into Netflix’s Cobra Kai, the TV spin-off of sports drama franchise The Karate Kid, then you must still be enjoying the series’ return after the streamer premiered Part 2 of Season 6. And that also means you joined millions of others in reacting to the shocking cameo by one of the franchise’s most important characters: Mr. Miyagi. Daniel LaRusso’s mentor appears in a dream sequence where he doesn’t exactly comply with the rules of his dojo and viciously attacks his opponent.

Heald spoke to TV Line about Mr. Miyagi’s return to the franchise in digital form. Pat Morita, the actor who gave life to Miyagi throughout the entire franchise, passed away in 2005. In previous seasons of Cobra Kai, audiences enjoyed his return when old footage was reused in the series. But for Season 6, they had to outsource and use technology to bring Miyagi back. Heald doesn’t only say how they did it, but why they felt they had to:

“Pat and Miyagi are the beating heart of this series, and without Mr. Miyagi, there would be no
Karate Kid
and there would be no Miyagi-verse, as we like to call it. For so many seasons, we’ve told a Miyagi story that was focused on the absence of Mr. Miyagi.

This season, we’re digging into a little bit more of the looming presence of new information, new ideas or a new glimpse into a part of Mr. Miyagi’s life that the series has never focused on. That Daniel has never been aware of. So by digging more into that and getting more and more in Daniel’s head with his kind of tortured idea of, ‘What didn’t he know?’… Does that affect and infect his opinion of Mr. Miyagi?”

The producer is talking about the Miyagi twist that started when LaRusso found Miyagi’s compartment, which shed some light on the real sensei. Apparently, Miyagi was involved in some shady business, and Part 2 of Season 6 expanded on that. Terry Silver, who also returns in the latest episodes, gives LaRusso a piece of paper that proves Miyagi killed an opponent during a Sekai Taikai tournament, and he wasn’t as peaceful as LaRusso thought.

How Did Cobra Kai’s Crew Achieve the Cameo by Karate Kid’s Miyagi?

Miyagi’s reveal in the “Eunjangdo” episode of Cobra Kai is a powerfully dramatic moment that ultimately convinces Daniel LaRusso that the values of cinema’s most important sensei were more in tune with the ones of their enemies. In LaRusso’s dream, Miyagi doesn’t flinch before striking without mercy at his opponent.

It was an emotional moment, and while some may have cheered when they saw the character, it was also very bittersweet. The moment didn’t last long enough for viewers to question the CGI used by visual effects artists, which has been previously criticized in movies such as Rogue One, which brought back Peter Cushing in digital form. Per Heald’s statement about bringing Miyagi back to life with technology:

“There’s a lot of technical things that you need to do with visual effects. There’s obviously talking to Pat’s estate and making sure that they’re aware and that they’re comfortable and that they sign off on that. We’re still coming out of the wild, wild west of AI and visual effects, and we’re entering a place of needing to have some standards in terms of how you present that. You can’t just do anything you want. Even though you’re not having an actor there on set, it’s still his likeness.

So we went through all of that process, which was important to us and the studio, and feel like we’ve captured this unfortunate vision that Daniel is having of being trapped in this nightmare that he’s been in. He’s been kind of in a waking nightmare and then he’s having a literal nightmare where a Miyagi like we’ve never seen visits him.”