COBRA KAI Creators Talk About Season 3 Being the Biggest Yet and the Move to Netflix
We heard the news last week that the hit Karate Kid sequel series Cobra Kai had made the move from YouTube to Netflix just before the release of the show’s third season. The series follows the lives of Daniel LaRusso, played by Ralph Macchio, and Johnny Lawrence, played by William Zabka, former enemies in high school when they decided to square off in the big karate tournament to work out their differences.
This show revisits the story, more from Johnny’s perspective, and catches up on how the men’s lives have panned out since high school. Both men have kids, and varying levels of success, and they each decide to get back into karate, teaching the next generation the basics and what they each believe to be the principles of the sport. It’s such a fantastic series, and I cannot wait for season three!
The creators of the series, Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg sat down with io9 this week to talk about the series’ move, and a little about the upcoming season. Hurwitz said the series actually had a lot of interest from Netflix in the beginning, before it was even made:
“Netflix was extremely interested when we first went out with it. They didn’t pass on it. They made offers and were very aggressive at the time. The only reason it didn’t go to Netflix back then was simply because of YouTube’s aggressiveness and guaranteeing a full season of the show before we had ever put a word on the page.”
The guys went on to sing the praises of YouTube, which was a great home for the series. Schlossberg then explained:
“I think initially YouTube thought, ‘OK, we’ll release season three and then maybe you guys will find a new place. But it was really important for us that season three be at whatever the new platform would be because we feel so great about season three. We just finished shooting it and we want it to have the biggest possible audience. So within the past bunch of months, it wasn’t a question of ‘Oh, my God, is it going to land somewhere?’ We felt pretty confident it would land somewhere. We just wanted it to be at the best place, which is Netflix.”
When asked about what they could reveal regarding the next season, the didn’t give up much of anything we haven’t heard before, like whether or not we will be seeing Ali (Elisabeth Shue) make an appearance, but they did talk about the season, which Hurwitz calls “definitely our biggest season,” heading to Okinawa. Schlossberg said:
“In this series, we get to re-explore these movies within the light of modern storytelling and where we are in our own lives now. So we love the idea of going back to Okinawa as...it continues the general theme of being able to look at the past in a completely different light as adults. One of the fun things about the show is we’re so ingrained with these memories. I mean, not everybody has seen The Karate Kid but a lot of people have seen it. And for us and a whole generation of people, these are images and moments and movies that are ingrained in our lives and in our past. And so we can write stories where characters are reflecting on their own lives and you as the audience are really connected because you remember those experiences. And I think people have had those moments in the first two seasons of Cobra Kai and Okinawa really allows for even more of that. So we’re excited for people to see that. It’s continuing what we love about this show.”
We are excited to see it! There’s still no word on when we will get to see the third season, but the relaunch of sorts will begin with the first two seasons debuting on Netflix, and the third season following shortly after. I can’t wait for Cobra Kai to come back! Are you excited?