00:00You have this special bond that's never going to kind of go away,
00:03which I feel like a lot of other shows might talk about,
00:05but 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.
00:14Ahead of the premiere of the final season,
00:16the cast and creators spoke to The Hollywood Reporter
00:19all about saying goodbye to the fan-favorite show.
00:22I mean, you guys have been on such a journey with this show.
00:24It first premiered on YouTube Red in 2018,
00:27it made the transition to Netflix,
00:28and then became this huge Netflix hit.
00:30When you look back on just your whole journey with the show,
00:33what 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...
00:50And now you can choose his face on your Netflix account.
00:54Yeah.
00:55I think Tanner and I had the same conversation at one point,
00:57just being like,
00:58where do you think it would go?
00:59Well, I mean, there's...
01:00And we could...
01:01Hope...
01:02But Netflix...
01:03Netflix?
01:03No, don't even get your hopes up.
01:06But it's...
01:07I mean, it's crazy.
01:07It's thanks to the fans that we get to be here.
01:10There was a little bit of fairy dust sprinkled on this show from the beginning.
01:12You know, we pitched to YouTube Red, which would eventually become YouTube Premium,
01:17almost as a practice pitch because they were such a new emerging platform
01:22that we couldn't really imagine the show we had in our brains being on our laptops.
01:29We had Netflix pie-in-the-sky ideas.
01:32But it ended up being a blessing because they leaned in fully to our creative
01:36and some of our untraditional storytelling to really create the template for what that show would become.
01:41At the time, even on YouTube, it felt really big.
01:44We made two seasons, we made three seasons with YouTube,
01:46and you felt like you were doing something that, like, a huge amount of people all loved.
01:51But in our personal lives, most people didn't know it that well.
01:54It was one of those things where online, you saw big numbers and you saw a lot of comments.
01:58But, you know, you know, the two of us are parents,
02:01and it wasn't the kind of thing where, like, you know,
02:02the other parents at the school all knew what it was.
02:05The moment it went on Netflix, everyone knew the show.
02:08Not only did, like, every parent who grew up loving The Karate Kid discover this new Netflix show
02:13that just showed up that we'd been working on for multiple years now,
02:17but their children had seen it too.
02:19So to see that rise and that sort of just change in our lives was really wonderful.
02:24The Sakai Tai Kai is the most prestigious karate tournament in modern martial arts history.
02:29For over a century, fighters from across the globe have gathered every two years
02:33to compete for the title of World's Best.
02:35The cast also opened up about their friendships off-camera and growing up on the show together.
02:40It feels like these are all our friends from middle school and high school,
02:44and now we're going to different colleges.
02:46But it's pals that will have, that'll be at our weddings.
02:51Like, these are people that are, I mean, if y'all get married, I don't know.
02:55I'd, like...
02:56Shona's like, none for me, thanks, but...
02:58If y'all get married, I'll be there.
03:00I don't know if Tender's ever going to find love.
03:03No, but...
03:04But, yeah, it's like, these are...
03:06We're inseparable now.
03:07Like, after you guys start punching each other and kicking and rolling around...
03:12Everyone just growing up with each other is...
03:14I don't know, yeah, it's true.
03:15It's like you have this special bond that's ever going to kind of go away.
03:18Yeah.
03:19Which I feel like a lot of other shows might talk about, but...
03:21But it's really strong and really true on this one.
03:24They're lying.
03:25Yeah, they're lying. We're telling the truth.
03:27The final season is set to premiere in three five-episode parts,
03:30with part one debuting July 18th,
03:33followed by part two on November 28th,
03:35and the finale event coming sometime in 2025.
03:38Why did you decide to split up the final season into these three mini-seasons, as you've called them?
03:43Once we realized we had more story to tell than a ten-episode season
03:47would give us, we talked with Sony and Netflix about doing more than that.
03:51We wanted to bring it in for a landing,
03:53but we needed more than one season and probably less than two seasons,
03:56so we ended up at this number, a nice round number of 15.
04:00But once we had that number, it ended up being perfect,
04:03because we write every single season of the show in two five-episode story arcs.
04:08We always bring things to a head by episode five.
04:10You kind of round out one story and begin telling the aftermath of, you know, what that wrought.
04:15So that gave us the ability to kind of think of this in a three-act structure,
04:19using each of those acts to tell a three-act story within.
04:23So you end up with these kind of bombastic, you know,
04:25three parts of this final season that are all completely different and yet interconnected,
04:30that have all the same feels that you'd expect from any other season of Cobra Kai,
04:35with rises and falls and cliffhangers and tragedy and explosiveness,
04:38and it ended up being, you know, perfect that they agreed that the three-episode drop
04:43fit within, you know, their desires as well.
04:45For more on Cobra Kai, head to THR.com.
04:48For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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