The following article contains mild spoilers for Cobra Kai Season 6.
Cobra Kai showrunners Hayden Schlossberg, Josh Heald, and Jon Hurwitz surprised worldwide audiences with a reveal in Season 6, Part 1: Mr. Miyagi apparently wasn’t the world’s greatest teacher — and he’s got a bit of a dark side. While this didn’t affect the five-episode premiere much, the trio is looking to develop Miyagi’s backstory somehow. This doesn’t mean an expansion with a prequel spin-off, but considering the show’s success, anything can happen in Netflix’s headquarters.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the showrunners discussed the addition of Miyagi’s past to Daniel LaRusso’s storyline. In Season 6, Part 1, we saw how Daniel discovered a chest below the dojo. This chest included memorabilia as well as some of Miyagi’s belongings. A newspaper article and a bloody headband were key to understanding that LaRusso and Chozen (the franchise villain who is now aligned with our protagonists) discovered something shady and unexpected about Miyagi’s past.
Schlossberg discusses how this discovery changed LaRusso’s – and everyone else’s – perception of Miyagi as a loving man who only used violence on extremely special occasions:
“From the very beginning of this series, we’ve liked the idea of exploring the Miyagi character from the perspective of Daniel LaRusso. The character of Miyagi has always been there every season of the show. So, going into every season, we think about, how do we bring those Miyagi vibes to that season?” He continues, “Going into this last season, we wanted to give the Daniel LaRusso character the ultimate conflict, which would be challenging his thoughts about Mr. Miyagi. And we just draw that from real life where people view their parents or mentors as perfect people, or at least that they have this authority on their lives, and then you get older and you see your mentor as a human being and in a more three-dimensional way.”
Putting Daniel through that kind of turmoil just felt like in keeping with what we’ve done every season, and gave us the kind of big finale we’re ultimately looking for. The short answer is that as we got into thinking about season six, it became the main central thing we wanted Daniel to be going through.
How Can Miyagi’s Backstory Shift Cobra Kai’s Tone?
As the dojos head off to Barcelona for the Sekai Taikai tournament, Miyagi’s violent past could ultimately change Daniel’s mindset. In Part 1, they discovered that Daniel’s sensei and mentor owned a boxing gym, and he fled to China as a fugitive from the law in the 1940s. But how could this affect the show? We don’t see much happening, except for Daniel’s conservative values being twisted because he could understand the peaceful aspect of karate wasn’t… real.
Miyagi does not have a great presence in the franchise reimagining, so if showrunners want to expand his backstory, they could do so with a spin-off prequel that focuses on where he came from, and how he formed the legacy we are now extremely familiar with. But let’s be honest: making Miyagi a bad guy wasn’t exactly an effective move. That is if his past doesn’t come back to haunt the current generation.
Related
Why Tory Needs to Be Redeemed Once Again in Cobra Kai
Cobra Kai already had a redemption arc for Tory, but given the current circumstances, it’s crucial she gets the opportunity for redemption once again.
When Will Parts 2 and 3 of Cobra Kai Season 6 Be Released?
Part 1 was released on July 18, 2024, and viewers instantly binged its five episodes. It got almost 15 million views in four days, and it held its spot as Netflix’s most-viewed series for a week, where it got nearly 10 million additional views. Perhaps the three-part release seems a bit of a gamble for Netflix, but it’s pretty obvious that they intend to capitalize any way they can in the show’s final season.
Part 2 of Cobra Kai also consists of five episodes, which will be released on November 15, 2024. And the five-episode Part 3 will be released sometime in 2025. The official date is yet to be confirmed, but they probably won’t release it close to Netflix’s other juggernaut that will also end its run in 2025, Stranger Things.
Cobra Kai
is available to stream on Netflix.