Spoilers to follow for “Cobra Kai” Season 6 Part 3.
“Cobra Kai” has featured plenty of twists and surprises. It’s a show full of scenes that feel like absolute shocks to the system, as though they’ve been lifted straight out of a soap opera or sports anime. We’re talking about moments like Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) unexpectedly teaming up with all of his former rivals — Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), and Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan) — to fight Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), or that time Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) was nearly paralyzed back in Season 2.
Now, “Cobra Kai” Season 6 Part 3 has upped the ante in every capacity. Following the Sekai Taikai being interrupted by a tragic death, the last five episodes of the season see Terry Silver charming his way into un-canceling the tournament and bringing the show back to where it all began — the site of the 1984 All-Valley Karate Tournament. These episodes are not only filled with references aplenty to the original “Karate Kid,” but also major reveals and shocking moments. Arguably, though, no scene is quite as shocking as when Martin Kove’s John Kreese has a change of heart and battles the franchise’s big bad, Terry Silver, ultimately blowing up both Terry and himself to smithereens.
It’s big, it’s grandiose, and it’s absolutely ridiculous, but most of all, it kicks ass. That being said, are the two karate bad guys really dead? During a roundtable interview /Film took part in, the co-creators of “Cobra Kai” shed some doubt on the matter. When asked about the lack of corpses in the aftermath of the scene, co-creator Hayden Schlossberg said that was by design:
“We could have shown the dead body and said, ‘Okay, well, that’s that.’ We purposely had a very wide shot of the yacht exploding, and there’ve been amazing stories actually of fire survival and boat explosion survival that leave open the interpretation of all different possibilities. And so just don’t count anything out, I would say.”
“It was really important to us to have these characters have an exciting, climactic, explosive finale. And we wonder, as the audience, will we see them again or not?” Schlossberg continued. “We have not seen any evidence they’re dead.”
“Because that doesn’t exist. They blew up,” added co-creator Josh Heald, quickly jumping in to jokingly “correct” Schlossberg. And yet…