The Karate Kid series remains one of the most important franchises in cinema history, it tells the story of karate student Daniel LaRusso and how he was taught the martial art by the legendary Mr. Miyagi. Although many may think that the main story is LaRusso’s, the reality is that Mr. Miyagi is the character that added all the mystery and mistique to the entire franchise. After several decades, the franchise continued with the Cobra Kai series on Netflix that is currently on its sixth season. The final season is currently underway as the streaming service just released Part 1 of three that will roll out over the rest of 2024. The first five episodes of Season 6 have already been viewed around the world by nearly 25 million people as of July 18.
A Mr. Miyagi series is in the works at Netflix
Creators of Cobra Kai Haiden Schlossberg, Josh Heald, and Jon Hurwitz recently spoke to the folks at the Hollywood Reporter. They are promoting the Season 6 rollout but they also touched upon a very interesting bit of news for the future of the franchise. On Cobra Kai, the series does have several flashbacks of characters who appeared in the original trilogy and there are countless mentions of Mr. Miyagi. But the Cobra Kai creators want to take the legendary sensei’s story a step further. They mention the plans to expand the franhise even more with a prequel story that talks about Miyagi San’s origins and how he eventually became the karate sensei we all know and love. The Netflix show already hints at a possible violent history before be became the teacher, that is something they want to expand on a potential new series.
When asked about a potential spinoff, Schlossberg said a Miyagi prequel series is in the works: “It opens up all these questions about Mr. Miyagi and what his life was like, and that’s been something we’ve been wanting to do for a while. We’ve talked to Robert Mark Kamen, the writer of the original Karate Kid who based this whole movie off his sensei who studied Okinawan karate; we’ve been talking about all this Miyagi backstory with him, which helped us with season six stuff. Now that we’re done, we can actually start getting into this stuff. We’ve just been focused on Cobra Kai and finishing it off. And right now, we’re in the process of editing the last couple episodes. Once that’s done, we’ll hopefully have some exciting things.”