Mr. Miyagi Prequel Series Teased By 'Cobra Kai' Creators

Prequel films and television shows can be hit or miss. Ya know, just like… all film and television. Quality can vary! But, I’m talkin’ bout prequels. Those wonderful stories that often seek to answer questions not asked. To quote the great Patton Oswalt, “I don’t give a s*** where the stuff I love comes from. I just love the stuff I love.” I feel that quote in my bones. However, if a story is compelling, I will give it my attention. The same goes for a compelling character, and Nariyoshi Miyagi is one hell of a compelling character.

Miyagi was played by legendary actor Pat Morita. The role initially earned him an Academy Award nomination. He would then go on to play the character in three more films. Miyagi was a decorated World War 2 veteran. While he was fighting in the war, his wife and their baby perished during childbirth. He would later become a handyman and teach young Daniel Larusso and Julie Pierce the art of karate. He rules! The creators of Cobra Kai think so as well.

Cobra Kai, a sequel/requel/spinoff to The Karate Kid is entering its final season. Still, the show’s creators, Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, have made it clear that more could be on the way. “We think about spinoffs with Cobra Kai all the time,” Schlossberg told the Hollywood Reporter. “Cobra Kai itself is, in a way, a spinoff of The Karate Kid. We took the bully from The Karate Kid, we took that branch and created our own tree out of it, and we feel like we could do that with any of the characters on the show. We definitely thought about that as we’re tying things up with all the characters. We think about the fun of following them in their futures and in, addition, we think about the past.”

The show has already begun teasing Miyagi’s past, laying the groundwork for a possible prequel series. “It is one of the reasons why we did the Miyagi box story this season,” Schlossberg explained. “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…”

While the creators are interested in exploring Miyagi’s past, they have a show to finish first. “I would say that we definitely want to do that and have been talking about that,” Schlossberg said about a possible prequel. “But the focus has been on Cobra Kai. As we’re finishing that up, we’ll see exactly what path we take in terms of spinoffs, but it is definitely something that we’ve been wanting to do. It’s just that we want to wait until we get finished with Cobra Kai first before we get into that.”

I haven’t watched any Cobra Kai, but I think I may need to dive in! I love The Karate Kid and I should have assumed that they would mention Miyagi in some way, but if they are leading to him getting his own show, they have my attention. Miyagi rules, of course, I want to watch a prequel about him!