Cobra Kai’s trio of showrunners, producers, writers, and directors, Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, have been thinking about their series finale for years. “Even before we wrote the first episode, we had a sense of certain things that were important to us,” they tell Gold Derby. “We knew that we wanted to end our series with Johnny Lawrence having a second chance at life.”
Cobra Kai delivered its final karate chop on Feb. 13 on Netflix, and fans are still coping with having to say farewell to their favorite characters, including “frenemies” Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). In this exclusive port-mortem Q&A with Gold Derby, Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg open up about crafting a series finale, the alternate ending you didn’t see on TV, and the show’s upcoming Emmy chances.