Ralph Macchio and Cobra Kai's Creators Break Down the Series Finale, Which Was Planned for Years

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Cobra Kai's series finale - Season 6, Episode 15, "Ex Degenerate"]

After six seasons, Cobra Kai has come to an end the only way it could — with one final tournament showdown in the Valley. 

Except this time, it wasn't the usual teenage Cobra Kai or Miyagi-Do student fighting, it was Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), with a once-in-a-lifetime chance at a do-over for the loss that has haunted him since the events of 1984's The Karate Kid. And now he had someone supporting him as his Sensei that would have felt unthinkable for decades: Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), the same guy who crane-kicked his ass back in '84, sending both of their lives on very different trajectories. 

As it turns out, this was an ending long planned by the show's creators and executive producers, Hayden Schlossberg, Jon Hurwitz, and Josh Heald, with Schlossberg telling TV Guide, "From the early days of talking about this show, we would [ask] ourselves, 'Where do you think the last season would be and where would it end?' And the idea of Johnny getting a second chance and being on the red mats of the All Valley just felt like the right way to end the series."

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OK, sure, technically Johnny's not fighting in the All Valley tournament this time. He's in the prestigious worldwide event known as the Sekai Taikai, but it's still in the same location where the All Valley occurs. Johnny is forced to personally compete against the younger and very dangerous Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan) after Johnny's Cobra Kai and Wolf's Iron Dragons become tied for points. The Sekai Taikai rules say a tie is broken via a fight between the dojos' Senseis, and in the end, it's Johnny who stands victorious. 

Said Schlossberg, "In the very first episode, you see Johnny taking a drive, listening to 'Head Games,' and he's flashing back [to losing the All Valley]. You know that this is something that's just on his mind. That was the pivotal moment, that was the turning point of his life. And now he gets a second chance right there on the red mat against an opponent who's got a special kick. And it's going to take his friendship with Daniel – that's been a six-year journey – to get him through that moment. That just felt like an awesome end for us as fans." 

As Schlossberg referenced, it was quite the struggle to get Johnny and Daniel on the same page, much less becoming genuine friends and then, finally, for Johnny to trust Daniel enough to ask him to be his Sensei for this crucial, climactic fight. Asked what it was like for him and Zabka to now play out this surprising dynamic, Ralph Macchio told TV Guide, "We loved it. It was awesome. Because there's been so many bumps and bruises and slips and falls and actions on reactions of overreacting, as these characters do with each other, to keep them like this for at least the first 45 episodes." He noted it wasn't really until Season 5 that they smoothed things out, after multiple temporary tries before that. 

Macchio added that for him and Zabka and for Daniel and Johnny, "It was all embracing for both of us to kind of be on the same team and me have his back. It's a victory for Daniel to see Johnny succeed and then both team up together. They need each other for Johnny to win."

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In the final fight, Johnny is at first badly losing, filled with self-doubt, before Daniel reminds him of the Cobra Kai approach: that fear, pain, and defeat do not exist in their dojo. Johnny rallies and then ultimately wins because he also remembers Daniel's Miyagi-Do's teaching to use more defense and to let Wolf come to him. As Macchio put it, "[Johnny] needs to trust the Miyagi-Do way, dare I say, and Daniel needs to enforce a little bit of Cobra Kai at the right time to wake Johnny up. I like those moments. The writers really do a great job of checking all those boxes and making a very fulfilling and satisfying ending that makes you well up in your eyes and feel the feels and the tears and the cheers and you feel like you're back in the movie theater." 

Though they had led Miyagi-Do together for most of the final season, the ending of the series finds Johnny and Daniel now back to running their own separate dojos, but with a partnership across them, as their students split their time learning both the offense-driven Cobra Kai methods and the defensive measures of Miyagi-Do. And the final scene of the series shows Johnny and Daniel even discussing which of their two dojos would be best for their various shared students to compete for when the All Valley next comes around.  

Still, as much as they're on the same page and root for all the kids, do Johnny and Daniel still get at least a bit competitive again when the All Valley is actually occurring? Said co-creator Josh Heald, "Absolutely! We see what happens with these guys. They're in the healthiest possible place we could have left them but they're still human beings. So that's not to say that they're not going to get competitive, even as they're trying to share rosters and decide who enters the All Valley under which banner. But I really do feel like because of everything they've been through, they can root for one another and can feel that a Miyagi-Do victory isn't a Cobra Kai loss in the way that it would have been in Season 1." 

Though Cobra Kai was primarily filmed in Atlanta, the series finale featured a couple of key sequences filmed in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, where the show is set — including an opening montage showing Johnny and Daniel driving down the Valley's busy Ventura Blvd. in the 1947 Ford Super De Luxe Daniel was given by Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, plus a big Rocky-inspired sequence in the same area as Johnny and Daniel run together, eventually drawing a crowd running behind them. 

Macchio said it was surreal "shutting down Ventura Boulevard and running" and that for the driving sequence "we had the '47 Ford out there. We shot all that stuff. That was the first time I drove that car in the San Fernando Valley since 1983 [filming the first movie] or maybe '85 for the second movie."

Regarding the running sequence, he did add, with a chuckle, "It was tiring and it was uphill! I kept saying, 'Couldn't we be running downhill? Why do we have to run uphill?' as we did it like eight, 12, times. You know, there's a whole lot of Rocky. There's a few times I have a whole Rocky speech. I was like, 'At what point are we done with the Rocky references?' But it's kind of fun. The fans love it. That was awesome. That was a fun day."

Macchio noted that after he and Zabka filmed the scenes in the Valley, there was one more important day of filming in Los Angeles that had a lot of significance for the two of them and The Karate Kid saga. "The next day, we ended it on the beach, running down the beach and tackling each other in the water. Fourty-one years later and the first scene I did in the [first] movie was on the beach, when he kicked the crap out of me. So there's the life of Ralph and Billy and Johnny and Daniel bookended and full circle."

All episodes of Cobra Kai are now streaming on Netflix.