‘Cobra Kai’ EPs Reflect On Season 2’s ‘Showstopper’ Finale & The Important Return Of Sensei Kreese
Paige Kindlick
The ‘Cobra Kai’ producers are recalling their favorite season 2 moments, which they’re calling ‘a beast to produce!’
While we anxiously await season 3 of Cobra Kai, the popular YouTube show’s producers, Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg, spoke to HollywoodLife.com about working on season 2 and what is to come! “Season two was a beast to produce. We wrote a very ambitious season and had the exact same amount of time that we had for season one to make it,” explained Josh Heald in an EXCLUSIVE interview. “If you look at the earliest episodes of season one, it’s pretty much just Johnny [William Zabka] and Miguel [Xolo Maridueña] hanging out at the empty dojo. In S2, from the get-go, we have 50 kids over here, and 30 kids over there, and people falling into water and the cement truck. We just went out there, and we went to war, and we made it.”
The show was met with rave reviews and quickly picked up for a third season, to continue the story of the original Karate Kid and their dueling philosophies. “One of the most special episodes was bringing back some of the original Cobra Kais from the movie, the first Karate Kid… When you have moments of that on this show, all of a sudden you’re in the woods having emotional moments with grown men,” Jon said. Hayden added to his sentiments, saying, “The big thing this season for me as just a fan of Karate Kid was bringing back Marty Kove as Sensei Kreese, and what he brought to the table. It’s not just a fun character to add to the mix, but also it creates a relationship and a story arc for Johnny in the season that’s really interesting.” In the original Karate Kid, Sensei Kreese was Johnny’s violent and cruel instructor, whose behavior made Johnny the fighter he is, but also gave him anxiety.
“As a kid, Johnny’s going through an experience at home, where he has this step-father who buys him nice things, but doesn’t give a shit about him., and he finds a father figure in Kreese that he connects to, who yells at him and teaches him to be a soldier,” Josh explained. “In a way, it made Johnny into the best soldier. He was a karate champion in the Valley in the ’80s, but we also saw the downfall of that — Kreese wasn’t the father he really needed at the time. He wasn’t capable of being that ‘Mr. Miyagi’ type of — ‘Hey, come here, let me tell you the heartfelt thing you need to talk about.'”
The EPs reveal they wanted to show that Kreese has evolved, and it happened to be “one of the most fun and poignant scenes to write and film.” “We see Kreese stripped down, removed of all of the bravado and the brashness and the muscle, when he has to admit that life just eventually dumped him out, and he got old and forgotten,” Josh said. “There’s some tenderness there and some connection that’s real, that Johnny can grasp onto and see a little bit of the future — that if he doesn’t clean up his own act as a teacher and as a father, then perhaps he’s destined for the same fate.” We’ll have to see if Johnny is capable of that in the upcoming season 3!