COBRA KAI Creators Talk About Bringing That Surprise Controversial Cameo Into Final Season

Netflix dropped five new episodes of Cobra Kai Season 6 this past weekend and it escalated into one hell of a bonkers brawl! This show is so ridiculous yet so much damn fun to watch!

Spoilers ahead for those who aren’t caught up!

This final season has been focusing on the main characters competing in the global karate competition known as the Sekai Taikai. During this, though, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is wrestling with some things that he learns about his teacher, Mister Miyagi.

In the story, LaRusso learns that his late martial arts teacher killed a competitor at the Sekai Taikai competition many years before.

In the tenth episode of the season, as this discovery weighs on Daniel’s mind, he has a dream where he finds himself fighting Miyagi in a tournament. That fight ends with a brief CGI re-creation of the late Pat Morita.

In the final moment of the dream as Miyagi is about to destroy Daniel to end their fight, a CGI version of Morita comes into focus. As you might image, some fans weren’t happy about this and it caused a bit of controversy, but it did have the family’s blessing.

ComicBook recently had the opportunity to speak with Cobra Kai showrunners Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald, and Hayden Schlossberg about the decision to create this cameo for Pat Morita.

Hurwitz said: “It’s something that we’re very sensitive to and it’s something that we didn’t take lightly.
To be honest, it started with conversations with Ralph Macchio.

“From the very beginning of us making the series, Mr. Miyagi’s presence has been so important to Cobra Kai. Even though Pat’s no longer with us, we’ve paid tribute to him throughout the series and used clips from him in the past.

“And as this technology has developed over time, when when we were thinking of Daniel’s journey in the final season, we wanted him to be wrestling with his relationship with Mr. Miyagi, the revelations that happen in many people’s lives where you learn things about your parents or your mentor that you never knew just because they never told you or they didn’t feel the need to tell you.

“And you have to think about does that change anything in terms of your relationship with them or does it help you realize just that they’re complicated, that all human beings are complicated and have pasts that have ups and downs. And we certainly know from The Karate Kid that Miyagi had that in his life.”

Hurwitz went on to share that the teams behind the show worked closely with Macchio and Morita’s family to make this happen. The late actor’s estate backed the decision to use Morita’s likeness in that sequence.

Hurwitz said: “Ralph was a big proponent of the idea of sharing screen time with Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi one more time. So we wrote the scenes and we worked with Sony to reach out to his estate, as we have in the past been clearing things.

“And we were met with a warm reception to the idea of Pat’s likeness being used on the show in this capacity. If this was a scenario where, you know, Pat’s estate and the family had no interest in it, we certainly wouldn’t have gone down this path.

“This was something that was coming from a place of love. It was coming from Pat’s greatest screen partner in Ralph Macchio and our Cobra Kai team. And once we had the blessing and the approval and excitement from the people in Pat’s life, we moved forward.”

Schlossberg went on to say that this cameo happened because they felt that fans would want to see Miyagi return to the screen in some capacity.

“We always operate with what we want to see as fans. And I love Pat Morita from The Karate Kid. Any version of him coming back would be exciting to me as a fan. And we understand it’s not Pat Morita. It’s a technology. It’s a likeness.

“And that’s where I just think, as a viewer, you go in with your suspension of disbelief… And we just operate under the assumption that fans are going to want to see these things and want to bring these characters to life in their own mind.”

For me personally, I thought it was cool to see Mr. Miyagi again! I wasn’t expecting that, and I just accepted it as part of this story that the Cobra Kai creative team wanted to tell.

What did you think about Mr. Miyagi’s CGI cameo?

The first 10 episodes of Cobra Kai Season 6 are now streaming on Netflix. The final five episodes of the series will premiere on February 13, 2025.