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Fans ofCobra Kaiknow that the series' recent fourth season was jam-packed with all kinds of thrills, relationship drama, and intense karate showdowns that were first laid out inThe Karate Kidseries of films that inspired the Netflix series.
But while attending a showcase panel at the 39th PaleyFest in Los Angeles on Friday, the cast and creators teased an even more eventful and unpredictable fifth season ahead after the All Valley Karate Tournament.
Executive producer and showrunner Jon Hurwitz told PEOPLE that after a fourth season finale that was tightly plotted down to every moment of the tournament — which saw Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) and John Kreese’s (Martin Kove) brutalCobra Kaidojo emerging victorious over the students of both Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), even after the two long-sparring senseis mended their fences — season 5 will be loaded with surprises.
“The fun with season 5 is you don’t know where it’s headed, because season 4, you knew a tournament was coming — season 5, it’s a wide-open canvas,” revealed Hurwitz, 44, who said he and fellow creators Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg and the writing team never tire of mining theKarate Kidsource material for new inspirations.
“We’re all super nerds and super fans,” he continued. “We’re all obsessed with the characters. This is our high-end fan fiction! We’re just always looking for ways to surprise. Maybe there’s some surprise appearances in store. Always looking for ways to draw from the past in fresh ways. And also do things with our characters that people fall in love with onCobra Kaithat maybe people wouldn’t expect.”
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Zabka said that after playing Johnny as Daniel’s reformed, misunderstood antagonist who’s now an often clueless but well-meaning underdog throughout the series, it’s refreshing to see Johnny beginning in a relatively promising place despite the loss of his devoted student/foster son Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), who took off to Mexico to find the biological father he’s never known.
“Johnny is in a good place because he got the one thing back that’s been missing from his life, and that’s that embrace with his son,” Zabka told PEOPLE. “So even though he lost a tournament and he doesn’t get to be a sensei, he did get the prize of his heart, which is his own blood.”
“He has a woman who loves him and accepts him for who he is and as he is, and that’s set him free in a lot of ways,” the actor added. “So the evolution of Johnny is very, very, very, very good, comforting, and he is in a good place.”
The season finale left several other juicy plot threads dangling, most notably that the returnedKarate Kid Part IIIvillain Terry Silver framed John Kreese for assault in order to get him out of the way as Silver plots to take over and expand the nefarious, win-at-all-costs Cobra Kai schools across the Valley.
“We are in overtime of the story – not the story of what we have [planned], but the story of what happens when the ultimate darkness comes over the Valley,” Heald told the PaleyFest audience. “[Silver] drops that microphone again, and this time he’s making good.”
Silver also poisoned the tournament victory of Cobra Kai’s female karate champ Tory Nichols (Peyton List), who discovered that he paid off the referee to ensure her victory, even as she was beginning to feel a pull toward the more altruistic and fair-minded approach of Daniel’s Miyagi-Do philosophy.
List said Tory’s journey will continue with “just having that heartbreak of realizing the ref was paid off, having to deal with that and to deal with that heartbreak and her relationship with Silver.”
Meanwhile, the season’s closing moments revealed that Daniel had decided to forge a tougher, more aggressive incarnation of Miyagi-Do, having summoned his formerKarate Kid Part IIrival Chozen Toguchi, with whom he forged a new, adult friendship with in the third season ofCobra Kai, with original actor Yuji Okumoto confirmed to again reprise his role in season 5. “Chozen is back!” declared Heald.
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“I’ll just say we own the soundtracks to every movie in the franchise and we look at it very thoughtfully and we carefully dole out the music that’s in the series, whether it’s something Bill Conti put as a piece of score or something that was a needle drop,” Heald told PEOPLE.
“And when a song from the original movie does show up on our show, it has to be a moment that earns it and feels big enough and it is the ultimate moment, because you get one swing of that bat to hit a home run,” he continued. “We intend to milk that whole thing until there’s nothing left because it’s so enjoyable to us as well, but you’ll just have to wait and see when we finally get to it.”
The first four seasons ofCobra Kaiare currently available to stream on Netflix.
source: people.com
