The Kristian Harloff Show - Cobra Kai Creators Interview Season 4 Spoiler Discussion

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

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I am so excited once again to be talking to the creators of Cobra Kai, ladies and gentlemen. I know you're excited. I got John Herbert, Josh Sealed, and Hayden Schlossberg on the show today to talk full spoilers on season four of Cobra Kai. If you have not seen it, the hell is wrong with you. You got no excuse. It's on Netflix. Get out there. Watch it.

I'm pumped. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. It's a big thing. I'm going to stop talking. Let's get into it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we are. It is season four. Spoilers.

I thought I had a spoiler episode the other day. Screw that noise. I got a real spoiler episode today. Ladies and gentlemen, joining me on the show today, the creators of Cobra Kai, John Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Fosburgh.

Gentlemen, it's been too long. How are you? Hey, good. It's great to have you back. I was so, I was, I was convinced that I was finally going to get you guys back in studio, like when we first did this. And then it's, it's all against this. Everything's against us.

But we're getting back. We're getting closer and closer to that. But as a lot of people have told you, I'm sure. One of the things during this time over the last two years of shit, to be, Frank, has been your show to get people just, in a different mindset. It's fun. It's exciting. And I was just talking to John, I brought this up to you before we went on.

You guys, I don't think get enough credit for what you have done in television as far as you do not do traditional television. And what I mean by that is, as I've mentioned to you all, there is wrestling inside of this. There is Star Wars. I mean, when I bring with the wrestling, there's baby face turns. Anybody, the heroes of today can be the villains of tomorrow and vice versa. So, John, when you're, like, how has this new style of television, because that's what it is, come into play with every season that you write of Cobra You know, it's, it's really just coming naturally. It's not something that we, like, set out to do in any sort of specific way. You know, we started with the story that we wanted to tell and, you know, have, you know, bring back Johnny and Daniel, bring back, you know, eventually Creece.

And, you know, now with season four, bringing back silver in a big way. But, you know, you started with the legacy. characters in the legacy story and have, you know, Johnny and Daniel teaching these kids. And as you start building out the dojos and you want to, you know, have conflict and drama going on constantly, you know, from episode to episode to episode, you know, scene to scene, episode to episode season to season, you're, you always want forward momentum. You always want there to be a change. You don't want to be treading water at any moment. So that's sort of our approach in general. And, you know, we're like we're fans playing in you know this sandbox that you know was built when we were six or

seven years old and we still you know have have a have a blast in there and we're just uh you know living living in the world when we're in the writers room the three of us and our amazing team of writers we're just having fun and we're thinking about where what do we want to see what are people expecting how can we give maybe what people want to see but in a different way than they would ever ever imagine or gives them what they don't want to see because eventually it's going to, you know, lead to something more fulfilling later. So that's really just the approach. Yeah. And, you know, Hayden, last time when you were on the show, we talked about it. And I actually meant to mean last time, I think when I first interviewed you guys back when I was

in Collider. And I, I think that what has been so special about this show was that you can clearly tell. I mean, as John just mentioned, there's a plan. You guys have a plan as far as how many seasons. Like, do you, do you feel having a plan and knowing where you're going? Do you, Hayden, do you know how many seasons you guys have mapped out inside of your head, like an ideal world? Not really, because as you create, as you continue the show, you create new characters, you fall in love with different characters and different storylines. We do know that there is a place that we've wanted to go with our main characters from the very beginning. And, you know, there's all sort of practical things that go into play in terms of how long a show can go on.

especially one with, you know, teenagers in a high school. So we're aware of all that. We, you know, so it's, you know, it's the how many seasons was never like 100% in our heads. And there's plenty of things that we've done in seasons two, three, four and on that we didn't think about from the very beginning. But I will say like every season we end up with storylines and things that we don't do that we think, oh, we could do this later. This is how we'll do it later. And so, you know, we still have like a couple really. big, fun, you know, chess piece moves and, and big kind of finale-ish type things that we've had in

store. And we've just finished season five. So the question is, are those like for the last season or not? Or, you know, we're in those discussions because we do feel like this has an end. But at the same time, we enjoy writing the characters so much that, you know, we don't want it to end. Right. Of course. But like as, you know, there's possibilities of, you know, spinoffs or, prequels and stuff like that and maybe that's a way to continue the universe beyond you know kind of this this initial kind of cobra kai story so i don't know we we think about all these things um but there's there's there's always it's never been about the number of seasons so it's always it's always been about like this is where we want the characters when it's all said and done all right i was

going to ask something else but i got i got a i got something you just said there too with the spinoffs and all that so people will yell at me if i didn't follow up with that is there is that something and you guys have talked about? Is that something that is possible to do? You know, obviously once, or maybe not once the Cobra Kai comes to an end, but is that something that could happen sooner than later? We've been speaking about spinoffs and extensions of the universe ever since we started writing Cobra Kai.

You know, we started talking about it with each other. And, you know, slowly we talked about it with Sony and we've talked about it with Netflix. So these are very fluid, ongoing discussions. You know, some of those discussions are deeper than others. We can't really talk about any of it yet, but we can say the world is expanding and we're managing it very carefully. Well, you just gave me another Christmas present. So thank you so much for that. You know, one of the things, the reason I love this show so much every time it comes out and I reach out to you.

And Josh, we were going back and forth about it. As I mentioned, you guys know I'm a big, I'm like a Star Wars junkie. And I see all this stuff in season three when it ended. And it's never like clear cut like who's veiled. who's Palpatine is always kind of like a mix inside of it and I saw that at the end of season three but my God is at present in season four and so much so that you guys made a reference to it with the Anakin stuff but Terry Silver to me is Palpatine to me he's the guy that's trained by Plagueis and then overtakes the one to crave the power are there people Josh inside in

in your writer's room talking Star Wars going over the you know these particular references my god from day one of the first season people were talking star wars in our writers room and it was more of a distraction and an annoyance than it was helpful to the show and gradually the show's story has caught up to that conversation and the two have melded and they've never been more in lockstep than in season four and you're exactly right there are there are so many star wars discussions that the show just grew into and And we, you know, the amount of times we've talked about, you know, red eyes and, you know, a character having that sort of turn. The word younglings comes up a lot. Love it.

There are, and the fun of it is that some of our writers' room is not well-versed in Star Wars. So you really do have a good litmus test for how is this going to play if you're not a deep karate kid fan, if you're not a deep Star Wars fan? Because we've always wanted Cobur Kai to be able to stand on its own if you don't have a deep fan. knowledge. But if you do, you feel the parallels for sure. Absolutely. I'll just say that, you know, Robert Mark came in when he wrote that original script. There's, you know, he is a Joseph Campbell, like, you know, epic heroes quest storyteller. Ah, that makes sense. And overlaps, I think, with George Lucas in that sense. When you look at the, you know, the karate kid, even though it's, you know, it's in the valley and it's Recita and Encino, there is this, you know,

the cover kais are wearing black you know like there's there's a little bit of uh overlap i think even built into the uh original movie yeah i definitely could see that and i was fun i didn't as much as you guys know i'm a massive karate kid fan i didn't know the story of came in the fact that he was bullied as a kid and that that's where that an initial idea came from and then he combined it with another news article that he had seen i i was reading up every time this show comes out i do more and more research and I thought I didn't think I could be more of a karate kid fan than I am and you guys just make that more possible. So the wrestling side of it though, I have to ask that too because I wrote for WWE for a little bit and there are a lot of parallels and you guys mentioned you mentioned so I don't know if you guys knew this but I hosted a show at Roddy Piper back in the day and he was just a wonderful wonderful human being. But you mentioned him this season and that warned my heart. But there was also there's so many wrestling like I mentioned there are things that happen in this show that happened in wrestling. There are are these these these turns of like okay this person set up to be the villain but they see the they see the light and now they're the good guy look at robbie like what happens with robbie he set up as the ultimate villain but he comes around because of the relationship with his dad so are you guys all wrestling fans or the wrestler wrestling fans inside you know you know i think it's a little bit more accidental uh some of what some of what you're seeing there in the sense of like all three of us when we were kids loved wrestling um there you know maybe our writer or two in the room is like a little bit into wrestling right now.

But I think there's a similar sort of story instincts that just happen, I think, in the world of wrestling that happen when you have, you know, these warring dojoes and, you know, characters going back and forth and you're looking for interesting storytelling. You know, there's a reason why certain things worked in wrestling and continue to work in wrestling that happened to also work on our show and other types of storytelling. So I don't think there's anyone in our room who is a regular wrestling viewer these days, although all of us are familiar with it. And we have some characters on the show who are wrestling fans. And when we have those references, there'll be references that are either universal enough where we would know them or enough of the writers in the room would know that reference Radi Radi Rati Piper, of course, is a legend who we all grew up on.

So, but it really isn't an intentional thing where we're like, okay, like he's going to be making the baby face turn. Like none of that stuff has ever really talked about in the room. Well, like you said, it just happens to work that way because it plays like the mixture of all that. And the other side, the other thing is that we're all, all of us here are big 80s movies fans, obviously. And there's a ton of that. There's a ton of that feel. This movie can this, this, this what the show, excuse me, can be. That's what's so fascinating about it.

There are times where it can be so dramatic and kind of heartbreaking. Like there's that scene where Miguel, he just wants to be, he wants that father figure. in his life and a lot of that stuff is present throughout this series in general but that heartbreaking moment when he's there and he finally gets johnny johnny's like accepting him and he calls him robbie and it's just like this at that moment and then you have these funny kind of 80s montages and things that are happening with the i mean this the mixture that's got to be is that a hard balance now or as you said earlier that it's just it's kind of second had at this point you know i we've just found that we've just found that we, you know, whatever, we like different tones. We like different things and we're

telling a story and, you know, we try not to go from something that's absolutely heartbreaking to like stingray right away. We think about our transitions, but like we're at this piano and maybe we're in like a jazz mood. Maybe we're in like a slow sonata kind of thing. And, We just keep playing it. Sometimes we want it to be like dramatic and like get into that Star Wars place and get into that place. And then sometimes we want it to be just like 80s, badass fun. And then sometimes you want the sweetness and softness of like a Miyagi scene. And, you know, and we're just kind of surfing on what we think is the right story.

Like, you know, at the end of season two, Miguel falls off, you know, and gets, you know, paralyzed. And, you know, the early episodes of season three were like, okay, how do we find the fun in this? But we don't want to force it too much. So, you know, those episodes are a little bit like darker. And we just, but it gets funny. And like, so, you know, we just kind of go where like the story takes us. But our instincts are always, you know, comedy because that's where our background is.

So it's never going to get too serious, but we're not afraid to get too serious. And so every episode has something that's very serious and something that's funny. and it's finding that like just finding the flow Well it's it's but it's like You know you say they always talk You know We talk on the show all the time about balance

I mean it's really You're not going to find an episode of Cobra Kai that has no comedy in it You know and you're not going to find an episode That has you know Probably nothing No real emotion Going on or you know

We're always tracking relationships on the show Every scene where we're focused on These characters are in the scene how do they relate to one another? How are they feeling about one another at this exact moment? And sometimes in life, you know, it's a barrel of laughs. And other times it's tragedy. And other times it's, I want to kick this guy's ass.

You know, so, you know, so I think we're always, you know, we're riding the wave. And it's a feel thing. You know, I think if we did something that felt super jarring and felt off, we would all feel it. We'd all be in the editing room and be like, okay, that doesn't feel right. or in the writer's room and you're reading the script, you would be like, you would feel that there's something off, but we always feel like we're bridging those gaps

from, you know, the comedy to the drama. So when you guys are talking about these relationships and, and the plan, and I've been asking, I think since the first time we started talking about this for season one,

as I kept asking, when's Terry Silver coming in? Once Terry Silver coming in? And you guys have, you mentioned him in season one, obviously, during that time. How long,

did you guys know, know when you wanted to place them in the series and how long have you been talking to Thomas about coming back to reprise the role? I don't think we could say we knew he would start appearing, you know, as his present-day adult self in season four. I can't say that we knew that specifically in a very early season. We knew it would take a little while to get there. We knew that whole first season was this reintroduction and this ramp up to crease.

And we knew season two was this, you know, celebration of the big bad wolf. And season three was going to be this pick up the pieces and, you know, and bring these guys, you know, onto the same page. So it kind of, the closer we got, the closer we came to approaching Terry Silver. And the more we delved into Crease's backstory, it presented us with new opportunities to continue to start telling the story of Terry Silver for people who aren't Karate Kid 3 fanatics. You know, my wife is a huge karate kid fan.

She's never seen Karate Kid 3. So, you know, we write for people who are at all levels of the fandom or, you know, or who are just Kobra Kai fans who are meeting a new character. So season three really gave us that chance to start, you know, seeing this character, knowing what the importance of this character is as that character relates to John Crease. And then it was time. And the moment we knew it was time, the moment we knew we had a, fourth season. We reached out to Thomas very early. And, you know, right away, he was like,

well, how are you going to make sense of Karate Kid 3? Like, what are we going to do here? Because, you know, he had seen the show, and he knew the show had a very earnest, very honest, very honest tone. And he knew his character was asked in Karate Kid 3 to be this very arch, larger than life, villain and we addressed that with him in that conversation and we said that's the biggest thing we've been talking about and you know the moment we kind of told him what we were going to do he was like I get it that's great okay like I see it like let's do this and it was a very it was a very engaging conversation he's a writer like us so he really appreciated kind of the the dramatic beats and the steps that would be taken to to peel back the onion and then

to put those layers back on. So it was just a great conversation that became more and more conversations. And, you know, he sent us a video right after we got off that conversation. We had said to him, you know, the end of the first episode, you're going to kind of do this impressive kick

and you're going to destroy a bottle of wine on a high shelf. You know, you're comfortable with that? And he was like, he kidding me? And he went outside and just recorded himself kicking something, you know, off the top of a, you know, a heavy bag and it was, uh, it was a very impressive kick and there was zero training there. You know, he has just, he stayed in that kind of shape. And it was, it was amazing.

Yeah, John, I think you posted that on your Twitter, didn't you? Yeah, no, I posted that on Twitter. And yeah, I just remember when he sent that to us, we were all just like, you know, we, we knew beforehand, like, you know, we become friends with Robert Mark Kamen. And when we were talking about Terry Silver, he was just like, he could not have raved more about Thomas. He's like, he's an amazing actor, but he's an incredible martial artist. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, He's the best when it comes to all that stuff. So we knew that he had the skills. So when he sent us that video, we just kept playing it over and over again.

It was mesmerizing. We're like, holy shit. I couldn't stop watching. It was one of those things. I'm just like, how's he doing that? I was like, wait, did I miss something? I'm like, no, how's he doing that? It's incredible.

Just threw it. Yeah, no wind up. It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah. So watching him do what he does. And Hayden, you know, when you guys were writing, right in him, because I know that you mentioned last time,

you keep watching these movies and you can't even imagine how many times you guys have seen the movies over and over again because I pick up things obviously when I'm watching it but I can only imagine what you guys are picking up and one of the things that I saw at the end was when he opens up all these dojoes

he was going to open him up all over the valley he threatens Miyagi with that he threatens Miyagi with that in the dojo he goes I'm going to open up Cobra Kai dojo's all over the valley and then he does it so that was that that was obviously intentional I assume yeah you know I think

we're always trying to our approach has been you know people if you know who Terry Silver is and you're going to be excited about it and like Josh said we're not writing to all those fans but we know that they exist and they're part of our

yes they're we sometimes talk about you know our segment of evangelicals you know like in our in the fandom that are that have seen Karate Kid 3 and they may know that Terry Silver is arch but they love that aspect of him. And so it's like, we don't want to completely neuter that character where it's just

going to be like, okay, all right, he turned out to be just a really nice guy and there's no karate fighting for him. And it's just, you know, like we want to give fans kind of what they would want to see from him, but then you have to ground it. And, you know, so yeah, we looked at the movie. We saw, okay, this is what he wanted in that. But how do you make sense out of, you know, his personality in that and his motivations? Because that was the issue with karate. there's not a lot of motivation on his part other than you know he wants to get revenge for his friend but he's going above and beyond you know but it's like you know in a christopher nolan style like how how he how he like took something like batman and that could be silly and was like

okay how could somebody actually like decide to get a bat suit and do those types of things we're like you know how could somebody want to terrorize a teenager right and you know you think about you know Gordon Gecko and Christian Bale and American Psycho and those are not like ridiculous comedies. They're just like there was this 80s style guy that was just like chase in life and trying to be number one. And he's just snorting lines of coke. And that like just made the character feel real to us.

And so we and so you think like where's that character present day? And you know just okay, maybe he's just like he's lived this life but he's like the bank robber who just like I'm out of the game. I'm out of the game. I'm home. And, and Chris comes into his life like, hey, let's do one last heist. You know, and that was our thing. And like, you just wanted to end it in a place where that old Terry kind of came back.

Yeah, well, he was subdued. And it's like, well, this is Pandora's box. Chris, don't, don't do it. You think when you're watching, when you rewatch the scene now, you're just like, oh, you think you're in control, but you're really not. You're basically letting, you're letting Chuckie out. And it's exactly what's happening here. And you guys know right away that that's the intention from the second that you bring him in,

you know that we're going to toss him off into jail at the end here? Yeah, we knew our plan. When we were plotting out this season, that was the goal. It was, you know, have Silver be reluctant at first, have crease lure him in. It's good for a moment. And then, you know, the pettiness and issues that the two of them have between, one another start to boil over. Trees exerts his dominance.

Terry tries to, you know, prove his loyalty in a misguided way by kicking Johnny's ass gets sort of like shot down. And it's driven, you know, Silver's driven kind of crazy and is like, I'm done with this guy. You know, like he's, he, he, creases is, you know, off the rocker with what he has. Or he's not in his, his motivations are not aligned with. what he says he's he's talk he has this weakness he has this blind it's like you know again you know we we talked about like the the the ex bank robber who's going in for that one last heist you know because

that made the story feel real to us for these guys in their 70s and it's like finding out along the way that this guy bullshitted you and you it makes you be like you know what I'm gonna fuck him over he'll get arrested I'll take the money and I'll go off into this you know like that's the kind of story that we wanted and now we get like in season five Terry silver with the riches, you know, with the, with the victory. And yeah. Yeah, that's, that's the whole thing is that that's right away. And this is, and as I tell you guys, when I was saying, John, I'll, I'll, I'll make my

predictions where you guys won't answer me at all, which is understandable. This is what I do. And then we go back at the end, it will make sense to me. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But it makes it at the end, he goes, I'm going to have people teaching, Barnes got to come back. Barnes has to come back. Now, whether he's Tori's dad or whatever, so I'll live that up to you guys.

But, but I'm going to. I'm going to keep watching that, but Barnes, a second they said that, and I've seen him doing interviews, this guy wants to come back. He's coming back. You never know. He could be like, you know what? I played that already. You're full of shit, Hayden. We've already felt, we've filmed season five. So I guess we know if he showed up in season five. You do. And we'll find out. I love it. I love it. So other stuff, though, too, besides just the main care. And Terry Silver, I mean, just was an. absolute pleasure to watch it because as you said what a phenomenal performance in general by playing that one level of just like i'm out of the game i'm done i'm just he was like comatose almost when he was there and then by the end he's that cackling kind of maniac again because he's drinking again and the fact he threw in the i'm coked out of my mind or anything and and you throw that kind of the fact that he is relying on the substance again but how maniacal he can get you know with what he does paul walter

hauser coming back throw down competitor paul arthur houseer by the way So he comes back and the way that you used him was that it's, he's coming back to a different Corbri Kai. And I love Paul Walter Houser, man. I've gotten a chance to know that dude. And even when I first started to get to know him, all he did was rave about how much fun Cobur Kai was. He has so much fun doing it.

But I guess the same type of question. Stingray always the way to get this whole Terry Silver plot or was it, was it any, at any time anybody else? It's interesting. You know, Stingray, we love the Stingray character. We thought about putting a Stingray-esque character in season one and just there was so much story in season one that didn't feel right. Season two, we had seen Paul and I, Tanya. It had to be him. We created the character around Paul. And obviously at the end of the second season, he had to go off and serve his time. And so there's, there's, there's. It was just the fun of the re-emergence, as you said, of this guy until like, I'm back and, whoa, what happened? Everything's different. Where are my friends?

You know, as we discussed what that kind of, that one-upsmanship was that tables are turned moment for Silver versus Crease, we threw everything at the wall and we wanted to make sure it was something that nobody would see coming and that you really even couldn't predict in the moment if we showed you most of the A side of the moment. And that was the one that we all kind of felt like there's nobody, there's no way anyone's going to look at that moment and say, oh, I know what he's going to do. You know, it's just played so, it's the big, bad wolf eating, you know, one of the, one of the three little pigs. I don't know if I'm mixing my, my nursery rhymes, but it's really just. When we shot that, it was like, it felt like

Winnie the Pooh walking into the Buffalo Bill's layer. 100%. Yeah. And it's so, you feel so sad and bad. And you're like, oh, it's the wrong time, the wrong guy, the wrong place. And it just feels like shrapnel. But then to be able to use that character for such a huge plot moment was, you know, was just something that we, once we landed on it,

it was something we never looked back from. Yeah, played really, really well. And because it is that little bit of surprise at the end, you just think because it serves its purpose as that first part, he just beats the shit out of him. You're like, oh, he's just lost his mind and not even thinking that when it comes back, oh, that's why he did it. Oh, what a clever son of a bitch.

And he just continues to do that kind of stuff. And there's so many arcs like that. And there are so many different themes. And I will tell you that to me, as I mentioned, that Silver was my main standout, but the other standout to me in this as a character was Tori. Um, because Tori is a character that was always to me so far was, was, was the villain girl. She had, she had some layers. There were certainly layers, but you feel for her in this one.

Like you're when like you understand from everything, whether it's the stuff with, with, uh, Mrs. LaRousseau, if it's, all these things that are happening for her. You kind of root for her over Sam. And I think that was a, that was a, that was a ballsy choice, I think by you guys too, because this is Daniel Lu Russo's son and daughter and daughter who you're not really rooting for for the majority of this season. Was that intentional? Yeah, you know, we're just taking the characters on the on these stories. You know, when it comes to the character of Tori, you know, she came in in season two. We brought Peyton Liston and she was killing it from the beginning. We always worked to have, you know, some light layers to the character, but there's not a lot of real estate with the number

of people we have in our cast. But as time has gone on it, one thing that we did notice by the end of season two was, you know, there was very quickly a team Sam and team Tori contingent that was like very even. And, you know, I think it probably surprised us just how large the team Tory contingent was given what psycho behavior you saw from Tori, especially by the end of season two. So she's been a character that we've enjoyed working on every year. And yeah, when, you know, entering the season, we knew that we wanted to get deeper into sort of like who she is, why she is the way she is. You know, last we saw of her,

she busted into the LaRuso household. And it's like she just is angry. She's just so angry. So let's learn a little bit more about why she is the way she is. And having that pairing with her and Amanda was something that we thought was a really big breakthrough that we had when we were writing. As Amanda was the, you know,

loves her kids more than anything, defends her daughter more than anyone and, you know, wants Tori in jail. And for her to be the one to, one, to, you know, see a little bit of herself in Tori as she gets to know her and her circumstances and to sort of build that dynamic. And, you know, when you're heading towards that tournament, you know, have, have, you know, who is going to win? We're always trying to make it where the audience doesn't know exactly which way we're going to go before we landed. And we could

have gone either way and found fulfilling ways for each of them. But I think Tori as a character, weirdly enough, was more balanced than Sam had been for a while. in the season. Even though Sam right before that final match had sort of like come a little bit more into focus with everything, you know, she wasn't exactly herself for a while. And Tori had her eye on the prize and got it done. She did. Or did she? Or did she? Well, you know, that's that's true. But at the end, that's another great angle that we're going into going, how is she going to deal with it? Is she going to, is she going to, is she going to deal with it? Is she going to, there's so many great questions there because of what you said that balance there she's trying throughout the

whole season she tells even when she goes into the school she she tries to make amends with sam kind of and sam basically tells her go fuck herself you know and and it's like that's all of that led up to every single character i think i said this in my spoiler review is that every single character had an angle whether it was daniel's son daniel's daughter kenny was a great um new character also because he's from the second you see him and he plays the daniel lure Russo angle and this is almost as you're looking at him you're going what if Daniel Lou Rousseau went to the dark side and not just like for three seconds in Karate Kid 3 but what if he actually really went to the dark side and that's what happened because this kid who plays

Kenny man did he did oh my god at the end of that scene I was I was like that was that was that was that was that was that was that was that was that was that was that was that was Dallas we we put out it's kind of like when we cast the role of Hawke Hawke knew that we had a character that had a growth, a massive growth in personality going from, you know, quiet to completely outgoing. With Kenny, it was finding the right, you know, performer who could go from so relatable. Oh my gosh, what a, what a puppy dog of a character. I can't wait. You just want to give him a big hug and tell him it's going to be okay to, oh my gosh, there's a fire in his eyes. And I don't want to be on the wrong side of him. And it was,

evident from the very first time we saw Dallas read it was it was it was Dallas robust it was you know it was him he he had it he played it well because it's just like he he just had enough and especially the way that the like the world is in general with the stuff that's going on with bullying and when you when you look at how far can you push somebody and where do they go like perfect examples my like my father-in-law went through a lot of shit when he was younger like really like really bad stuff and but he came i became a professor at USC he's got you know he's got two great daughters. He's, and in a way that you looked like he shouldn't have been that way.

He chose to do, he chose a different path. But then there's people that go through certain things in their lives and they go to that dark place. I mean, that's the dark side and the light side. And to see, not only can he go that route, but then for Robbie to recognize it. And then Robbie to then go over to his dad and go, what am I doing here? Like, what am I, the anger and all that, it just, it's not place right. I thought it was a really sweet moment. Everyone was like, well, how's Robbie going to,

feel when Johnny's off looking for Miguel. Here's, and here's my next prediction. I think, I believe that Robbie's going to be with Johnny looking for Miguel. We'll find out in season five. But either way, so the other thing that I wanted to bring up to you guys was, I think that John, you were interviewed. I can't remember where it was. And you had mentioned the Miyagiverse and how every time you guys do an interview,

people ask you whether it's, hey, is Terry Silver coming back? When are we going to see Hillary Swam? all that stuff because I did see an interview, I think, though, with Hillary Swine because of Netflix, and I'm not going to ask you whether or not she's going to show up because you're not going to tell me. But I'm going to, I do want to ask the fact that she's obviously aware of the show because of her, I think her dog's name was, what was it? I saw some interview where they said that her, our dog's name was Kai or something like, people kept tweeting at her about it.

And she was like, what, and then she's aware of Cobra Kai now. And because of Netflix, have you guys ever, I mean, not about coming back to the show, but have you interacted with Hillary Swank at all? Can't even say that. At like a coffee shop or something. Hey, Hillary, how you doing? Like something like that? I'll just say as a blanket statement.

We've interacted with tons of people in and around the original franchise, which I count, you know, the next crowded kid as one of the original franchise. And there's actors we've spoken with who haven't appeared on the show yet, maybe have appeared in season five and we haven't told you about it yet or they might appear in a season after that or they never will. But we've got to know everybody and, you know, and talk to them all, you know, for the purposes of just building out the universe. I love that. Thank you so much. The other thing, though, that I loved was there was a few things and you mentioned it on Twitter where there's reference where so many 80s and 90s references throughout this and a lot of rocky stuff.

And that's another franchise of mine that is, that's just, I love. I've been watching that, rewatching that with my, with my daughter recently. And there's the, assume me for what, the Duke line, but there's a few other references besides just rocking. There was, so, I don't know if you confirmed this already, I apologize, but when my, my, my buddy, Ernst. I hope we see more of Louis soon. I hope Louis comes back in. But he introduced his sister, who then is now, is that, was that of my cousin Vinny kind of throwback reference? Is that, was that a, it was, we, you know, just through making the show, we've gotten to know Ralph and his family and his daughter. And we saw that she was really talented. And we've talked about, like,

you know, what is there something for her? But like, like, we don't. want to force that in but we knew that you know we've also liked leaning into because we're we're not italian guys we're from new jersey and know a lot of italian guys from new jersey and like that aspect of laruso and that's what we love about louis so we're always into like you know leaning more into some of that kind of fun and bringing that a little the tiny bit of sopranos yeah you know into cobra kai and uh we thought about that character um like a louis having a sister that would you know and And it's perfect for Ralph's daughter.

And, you know, we talked, you know, but we wanted something that wasn't just, oh, kind of a fun thing. Like, oh, she's in the show. Yay. Like, that's his daughter. Like, we wanted a really fun thing that was meaningful in the episode. And, you know, that was just one of the ideas I remember our writer's room came up with about like the Marisotemé version, but with child psychology instead of automatic automation.

Yeah, that was great. And then it was like, there was an outsider's reference in there, too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I want to make sure that that was, that was clear intentional as well. All right, good.

I want to make sure. Sometimes, I watched the show so much and sometimes I feel like I'm making it up. And then, okay, so we found that one for sure. Josh,

you also, man, you directed the finale. And what a job, what a job? I mean, you directed the last two finale's, right?

Yeah, John and Hayden did seasons one and two. I did three and four. You did three and four. So, and what and that's usually the one that is the make a break thing because you want people talking about it and you want people going oh my god and knowing that all the things that go down let's start with the with the tournament though because making the changes to the tournament which i thought was very smart of going through and bringing aisha back and saying like showing her though by the way inside of the one of the reasons well we can't have the guys fighting the girls anymore we're going to get in trouble here what was it what was the what was the choice to decide to go to make the the two different tournaments Oh my God, this was probably the biggest discussion of the whole season inside the writer's room was making sense of this tournament. One of the first things we decided was, you know, we have to find all the ways of one-uping ourselves from season one.

You know, we've done a tournament before. Yeah. So you don't, and you know in a tournament it's very structured. You know, you're going to have your qualifiers, your prelims, your quarterfinals, your semifinals, and your things. So we wanted it to not just feel like a sports. sporting event where we know what's coming and we know what the third act is going to be it's going to be the finals what are the things what are the roadbox obstacles embellishments um subversions that we can throw in there to to change it um and how can we kind of build the tournament into a like a mini movie within the season by doing it over two episodes um so the the biggest thing was okay there's this

you know bet on the table what does it mean to win the all valley you know when that bet was made if there's one champion. What if there's two groups? And we had that discussion. Is it, you know, is it what's real? And we kind of looked into it. And we looked around to actual 18 and under karate tournaments around the world and saw what they were doing. And there were both. There were mixed gender, but there was more, you know, women's tournaments and young men's tournaments. And we thought that would really enable us to show more of the interactions and the clashes that we wanted to show. But then we were left with this problem that, okay, well, now there's only two. What if, you know, Miyagito wins one and Kobri Kai wins the other, who's the champion?

And that's where skills came from very organically, because that also turned out to be something that's part of a lot of karate tournaments, these Kata competitions. So we kind of accidentally backed ourselves into a corner of making this thing overly complex and then gradually came off that. There were earlier moments where we were talking about actually tracking scores and keeping track of the math. And we decided to kind of like throw a lot of that away into like, you know, Devon's bringing Johnny up to date at one point and kind of doing a little bit of the math in our head as to,

well, if we do this and he gets into this, we actually have a chance. Because we didn't want the audience to focus on, well, who's ahead, what's happening? And you just kind of want to feel it. Right. So with a lot of those, you know, kind of once we put some of those big things on the wall and obviously, you know, Carrie being being another big piece of how we have a How'd that happen? How'd that come about, by the way?

So she tweeted that she was enjoying season three. And we were like, well, that's cool. And as we got into this whole idea of, of what the tournament looks like and one year after Miguel won the tournament at the timeline of our show. It was the idea that this group of people who put on this tournament are feeling very self-important,

feeling, you know, biting off more than they could chew and, you know, trying to reach for the stars. We actually had in season two wanted to go get like a celebrity for Valley Fest for that episode. We were talking about like, you know, local LA. It was Dallas Rains.

Dallas Rains. Dallas Rains. We wrote, we wrote Dallas Rains into it and Dallas was unavailable. He was unavailable. He did want to do it. He was unavailable. There was a family. It would have been like the big celebrity.

Yeah. So we wanted to like exist in that universe where my wife will lost her mind. She loves Dallas. Yeah. But we love that reach for the brass ring of like, you know, I bet we can get so and so. And, and we wanted to. present the idea that there's this like graveyard of like embarrassments of trying to get celebrities to show up to the to the all valley tournament that not only won't it ever happened but just

even bringing it up everyone feels like they have a egg on their face so then we can go even bigger when carry shows up and you know that ron pulled a real coup yeah it was it was the surprise of that and then it was you know i think for us we we get caught up in the in the all valley board that group of characters in a way where we where we get invested in them so there was that but beyond that it was like you know in the karate kid there's obviously the you're the best montage um and which is a legendary thing we didn't want to do the exact same thing but we love the idea of having a a throwback 80s song we had carry underwood cover a song from the original karate kid film that's a little lesser known but fit with thematically with what we're doing

and carried over it and just sort of the shock of the that these characters were able to pull this off and we and we are those characters. in a sense. We were putting on our show and she had expressed that she liked Cobra Kai. She expressed that she liked Cobur Kai. So we reached out. And we're like, okay, we have this thing. And she was like, yes. So does that mean that you reached out to Andrew Garfield? He's not, he's not part of the Miyagi verse. You can answer me that one. You can't answer anything. You can't answer anything. All right. Well, I mean, because that, that again makes sense to me because the guy obviously with everything going on with him this year in

general. I mean, what a... I will say any celebrity that puts out there that they, like Coburkeye, it's noted, we appreciate it, and, and it's in the memory banks, you know? Smart. Smart. Like, why wouldn't you? Especially, I mean, not only is Garfield like in a tremendous, tremendous actor, but he's like a, he's like a mega fan of it. So, hopefully, I mean, knowing you guys enough, I can't wait to see him in the seasons. We'll see. All right, yeah. So let's, uh, because I only got you to, I only got you for a couple, a couple more minutes. So let's,

one more thing I got to bring up chosen. I mean, how do I not bring up chosen coming back? Now, with him coming back was that, I guess it's kind of the same kind of repetitive question, but knowing that he was going to come back and the reveal of him and Danny working together because,

man, and it's something I want to repeat that I brought up to you guys last time we spoke, was I just watched Karate Kid 2 with my daughter three nights ago. It's always bizarre to me that Daniel just fought to the death and yet he comes back and he's scared of Mike Barnes. Makes no sense to me. But Chosen was just the way that as a young man, and we all know from when you, you change,

you definitely can, you change in the essence of who you are still there, but like there's things the way, the way that you perceive the world and chosen, this guy was looking at honor in a very different way than like Miyagi and Sato were, but he's changed and he's changed in age. And obviously him,

he was subdued and he, He taught Daniels some stuff in the Okinawa episode. So what is driving chosen to basically move to the states to do what he's doing here? I mean, I think that we kind of laid a little bit of this in season three. I mean, you know, you'll see more in five. But like he, I think feels a sense of duty and obligation because of how dishonorable like he was. I think he's in a constant state of. like I must redeem myself and and the main target of that is Daniel Laruso.

So I feel like if Daniel's calling him, you know, because I need help desperately. I think he's thinking that's my ticket. Like he didn't like Daniel didn't come in season three come to Okinawa for him. You know, they just kind of like went out for a walk and he taught him a few things, you know, but this is, you know, I've just, you know, for chosen. you know, it's, you know, this is somebody that he clearly now has a little bit of amended relationship with. And I think this could be something that could, in his mind, atone for his sins because you see in season three that like he's still affected by that as an adult.

But it's not just about Daniel. I mean, it's also about the Miyagi Do karate versus, you know, a toxic version of karate that's being, you know, taught and expanding and blowing up throughout the valley. So, yeah, and so obviously they're going to be team. up we'll see what's going on with johnny as he's now looking for mcgill and um when it comes to season five now you guys have finished shoot finish shooting we finish shooting so and then are we looking at it i don't know if it's if it's not announced yet but are we looking at december same type of thing or not announced yet they haven't announced it yet um you know we we have every reason to believe it probably will be but um but we leave it up to the that's cool Netflix scheduling um and

then any word yet has it been announced on are season six or we're still same thing let's let's see how we do for season five hasn't been announced yet um but we are you know our story uh we are writing beyond but um but has not been announced got it yeah is it to um the last question before i let you go so when it comes to because you've done the switch now from from youtube to now Netflix picked up season three when it was shot for YouTube I believe um and then four was specifically for Netflix so what I know that you had very positive experience working on the YouTube side of it. But now working with Netflix and being and having a successful show, a lot of freedom,

how you feel in being in the Netflix family? I mean, creatively, it's great. You know, it's, first of all, there were some executives from YouTube that came over to Netflix to ease the transition. And then the new Netflix execs that we've worked with have been, you know, they knew that the show had its own success and didn't want to, you know, screw with what was working. But like, you know, they are reading. every script, watching everything, every episode, giving their feedback. And it's always been a good

back and forth. So creatively, it's been great. The best part about Netflix is like, you know, marketing and the platform that they have, you know, at YouTube, we were always wanted to push our younger cast more and stuff like that. And Netflix has a lot more resources when it comes to, you know, getting the show out there. And that's been, you know, it's just optimized. You know, they know immediately what's working, what's not. I mean, YouTube did also. It just wasn't as robust of a platform. But I mean, Netflix can tweak just what icon you're seeing that draws you in as a first-time viewer

because they know you're more likely to click on, you know, something. It's really remarkable, just the reach and how they pull in fans and how they kind of manage a fandom. Well, listen, a lot of congrats and deserved success for you guys. Once again, I always love talking to you about the show. I always look forward to the show is one of my most

anticipated shows every time I hear it's about to drop I get very excited and no one can find me because I'm watching the show so thank you again congratulations gentlemen I cannot wait for season five season four was a hit you should see I mean obviously you've seen it the fans are losing the minds over this thing and as they should be so John Josh and Hayden thank you so much for joining me once again I can't wait to come back and see what I'm wrong about for season six all right everybody so guys once again please make sure you check out the guys and if you're not watching season four haven't seen season four you haven't seen season one you're dead to me no but you should go actually go and check it out watch cobra kai check it out and yeah i'll talk to you guys very soon we'll see you

on monday peace out