Cobra Kai will be ending its run on Netflix with its current sixth season. However, the show’s creators are hoping to further explore the history of the Karate Kid franchise.
In a new interview with THR, the future of the franchise was discussed with Cobra Kai creators Hayden Schlossberg, Josh Heald, and Jon Hurwitz. The three made it clear that they are hoping to keep the story going with potential spinoffs after the final episodes of Cbora Kai are released. Schlossberg noted how they have already gotten six seasons out of putting the focus on a different character from The Karate Kid with Cobra Kai, and he’s eager to delve further into the franchise by giving someone else the same treatment.
“We think about spinoffs with Cobra Kai all the time,” Schlossberg said. “Cobra Kai itself is, in a way, a spinoff of The Karate Kid. We took the bully from The Karate Kid, we took that branch and created our own tree out of it, and we feel like we could do that with any of the characters on the show. We definitely thought about that as we’re tying things up with all the characters. We think about the fun of following them in their futures and in, addition, we think about the past.”
Mr. Miyagi’s Story Has Plenty of Potential
He continued, “It is one of the reasons why we did the Miyagi box story this season. It opens up all these questions about Mr. Miyagi and what his life was like, and that’s been something we’ve been wanting to do for a while. We’ve talked to Robert Mark Kamen, the writer of the original Karate Kid who based this whole movie off his sensei who studied Okinawan karate; we’ve been talking about all this Miyagi backstory with him, which helped us with Season 6 stuff. Now that we’re done, we can actually start getting into this stuff. We’ve just been focused on Cobra Kai and finishing it off… Once that’s done, we’ll hopefully have some exciting things.”
The clear takeaway here is that Mr. Miyagi, played by Pat Morita in the first four Karate Kid movies, is one character that the Cobra Kai team wants to give a spinoff. Schlossberg further confirmed that a prequel series about the history of Mr. Miyagi is a concept that’s already getting talked about behind the scenes, though he stressed how they’re waiting until Cobra Kai is completely finished before fully pursuing a spinoff series.
“I would say that we definitely want to do that and have been talking about that.”
“I would say that we definitely want to do that and have been talking about that,” Schlossberg said. “But the focus has been on Cobra Kai. As we’re finishing that up, we’ll see exactly what path we take in terms of spinoffs, but it is definitely something that we’ve been wanting to do. It’s just that we want to wait until we get finished with Cobra Kai first before we get into that.”
