00:00You have this special bond that's ever gonna kind of go away, which I feel like a lot of
00:04other shows might talk about, but it's really strong and really true on this one.
00:09They're lying.
00:09Yeah, they're lying. We're telling the truth.
00:11Cobra Kai is coming to an end with season six. Ahead of the premiere of the final season,
00:16the cast and creators spoke to The Hollywood Reporter all about saying goodbye to the fan
00:21favorite show.
00:21I mean, you guys have been on such a journey with this show. It first premiered on YouTube Red
00:25in 2018. It made the transition to Netflix and then became this huge Netflix hit.
00:30When you look back on just your whole journey with the show, what comes to mind for you?
00:34Anytime anyone talks about the YouTube Red days and it going to Netflix,
00:38I think back of a conversation I had with Sholo driving to his house,
00:43where we were just sitting in the car going,
00:45Dude, wouldn't that be crazy if it went to Netflix?
00:47Ah, that'll never happen.
00:49Yeah, that's it.
00:50Now you can choose his face on your Netflix account.
00:54Yeah.
00:55I think Tanner and I had the same conversation at one point, just being like,
00:58Where do you think it would go? Well, I mean, there's, and we could hope, but Netflix,
01:03Netflix? No, don't even get, don't even get your hopes up. Like,
01:06but like, it's, I mean, it's crazy. It's thanks to the fans that we get to be here.
01:09There was a little bit of fairy dust sprinkled on this show from the beginning. You know, we,
01:13we pitched to YouTube Red, which would eventually become YouTube Premium,
01:17almost as a practice pitch because they were such a new emerging platform that we,
01:23we couldn't really imagine the show we had in our brains, uh, being on our laptops.
01:28Um, we, you know, we had Netflix pie in the sky ideas, but it ended up being
01:33a blessing because they leaned in fully to our creative and some of our untraditional storytelling
01:38to really, you know, create the template for what that show would become.
01:41At the time, even on YouTube, it felt really big. We made two seasons,
01:45we made three seasons with YouTube and you felt like you were doing something that like
01:48a huge amount of people all loved, but in our personal lives, most people didn't know it that
01:54well. It was one of those things where on online you saw big numbers and you saw a lot of comments,
01:58but you know, you know, the two of us are parents and it wasn't the kind of thing where like, you
02:02know, the other parents at the school all knew what it was. The moment it went on Netflix,
02:07everyone knew the show. Not only did like every parent who grew up loving the Karate Kid
02:11discover this new Netflix show that just showed up that we'd been working on for multiple years now,
02:17but their children had seen it too. So to see that rise and that sort of just change in our
02:22lives was really wonderful. The Sekai Taikai is the most prestigious karate tournament in
02:28modern martial arts history. For over a century, fighters from across the globe have gathered every
02:32two years to compete for the title of world's best. The cast also opened up about their
02:37friendships off camera and growing up on the show together. It feels like these are all our
02:42friends from middle school and high school and now we're going to different colleges,
02:47but it's pals that we'll have, that'll be at our weddings. Like these are people that are,
02:53I mean, if y'all get married, I don't know. I'd like,
02:57Shoma's like none for me. If y'all get married, I'll be there. I don't know if Tanner's ever
03:01going to find love. No, but, but yeah, it's like, these are, we're inseparable now. Like
03:08after you guys start punching each other and kicking and rolling around. Everyone just growing
03:13up with each other. I don't know. Yeah, it's true. It's like you have this special bond that's
03:16ever going to kind of go away, which I feel like a lot of other shows might talk about, but, but
03:22it's really strong and really true on this one. They're lying. Yeah, they're lying. We're telling
03:26the truth. The final season is set to premiere in three, five episode parts with part one,
03:31debuting July 18th, followed by part two on November 28th and the finale event coming
03:36sometime in 2025. Why did you decide to split up the final season into these three mini seasons,
03:42as you've called them? Once we realized we had more story to tell than a 10 episode season
03:48would give us, we talked with Sony and Netflix about doing more than that. We wanted to bring
03:52it in for a landing, but we needed more than one season and probably less than two seasons.
03:57So we ended up at this number, a nice round number of 15. But once we had that number,
04:01it ended up being perfect because we write every single season of the show in two,
04:06five episode story arcs. We always bring things to a head by episode five, you kind of round out
04:11one story and begin telling the aftermath of what that wrought. So that gave us the ability to kind
04:17of think of this in a three act structure, using each of those acts to tell a three act story
04:22within. So you end up with these kind of bombastic three parts of this final season that are all
04:28completely different and yet interconnected that have all the same feels that you'd expect from
04:33any other season of Cobra Kai with rises and falls and cliffhangers and tragedy and
04:37explosiveness. And it ended up being perfect that they agreed that the three episode drop
04:43fit within their desires as well. For more on Cobra Kai,
04:47head to THR.com. For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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