Cobra Kai creators are considering a Mr. Miyagi prequel series, but not until the main series has wrapped up.
The first part of the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai debuted just a few weeks ago, putting the grand finale in motion. However, even when the series does come to a close, Cobra Kai creators Hayden Schlossberg, Josh Heald and Jon Hurwitz have been entertaining the idea of more spinoffs, including a prequel series centered on Mr. Miyagi.
“I would say that we definitely want to do [a Mr. Miyagi series] and have been talking about that,” Schlossberg told THR. “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.” While it doesn’t sound like a Miyagi prequel is officially in the cards at the moment, it does appear to be something the creative team is considering.
Other Cobra Kai spinoffs have been considered, but the Miyagi prequel seems to be the obvious choice, especially considering that the current season of Cobra Kai has been teasing a dark backstory for the character. “We think about spinoffs with Cobra Kai all the time. 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,” Schlossberg said. “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. It is one of the reasons why we did the Miyagi box story this season.“
Schlossberg continued: “It opens up allthese 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 six 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. And right now, we’re in the process of editing the last couple episodes. Once that’s done, we’ll hopefully have some exciting things…“
Part 2 of Cobra Kai‘s final season will follow on November 15th, with Part 3 concluding the series next year. Unfortunately, our own Alex Maidy struggled to get excited about the first five episodes but admitted that it’s hard to judge the season without having seen two-thirds of it. “This is the first season where the opening chapters completely underwhelmed me,” Maidy wrote. “With too many red herrings and retreads of previous conflicts, Cobra Kai VI opens with a disappointing start to what should have been a slam-dunk wrap for this popular franchise. Maybe because a feature film is on the way, there is still hope for this story, but it feels more than ever before like Cobra Kai has run out of steam.” You can check out the rest of Maidy’s review right here.
Would you like to see a Mr. Miyagi prequel series?