‘Cobra Kai Never Dies’: The Creators on Saying Goodbye, for Now

Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the creators of the karate-centered Netflix series “Cobra Kai,” can’t agree on which of them would win in a fight.

“I would say me,” Hurwitz said.

Heald disputed this. “I’m taking Muay Thai right now,” he said. “But I think Hayden would be the most creative. He’d do something dirty.”

“I’m doping their water bottles,” Schlossberg said. He also mentioned blackmail.

Happily, in their years spent making “Cobra Kai,” which just completed its sixth and final season, they have never come to actual blows. Or crane kicks. Hurwitz and Schlossberg, the writers of the “Harold and Kumar” movies, met (as all cool kids do) in high school debate club in the 1990s. Heald, a writer of the “Hot Tub Time Machine” movies, became friends with Hurwitz a few years later, as college dorm mates. Once all three had been introduced, they bonded over a shared obsession: the “Karate Kid” movies.

“Our ‘Star Wars,’” Heald said.

The 1984 movie “The Karate Kid,” set in the San Fernando Valley, culminated in a championship fight between Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), the bullied child of a single mother, and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), the bully. Two sequels were quickly released. An animated series and a couple of reboots — one starring Hilary Swank and another with Jayden Smith — followed. Had the franchise tapped out?

Heald, Hurwitz and Schlossberg didn’t think so. They had hidden “Karate Kid” Easter eggs in nearly all of their films, and for years they had talked about writing a Johnny Lawrence movie. But it was only talk. They had no hope of getting that movie greenlighted.

Then in 2016, having witnessed the rise of streaming and the success of 1980s nostalgia plays like “Stranger Things” and “Fuller House,” they retooled their pitch, reimagining the movie as a series.