Cobra Kai may have redeemed Johnny Lawrence, but it has doubled down on making John Kreese the villain we always saw him as. Martin Kove reprised his original Karate Kid role and has made for one scary common enemy for Johnny and Daniel LaRusso. What makes Kreese the perfect villain?
Cobra Kai EP’s and co-creators Josh Heald, John Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg explained:
“We knew from the beginning that Kreese had been the big bad wolf of the franchise. In the ’80s, there was Darth Vader and there was John Kreese in terms of movie villains that frightened us as kids and rooms in which we didn’t want to enter. So we knew there was real power in Kreese and it contributed to why we waited until the very end of the first season to bring him back. Because he’s such a figure that takes all the life out of the room and draws focus that you want to give his moment gravitas and lean into that character for that fear and experience it through Johnny’s eyes and be with Johnny on that journey. So at first, we had to get our audience with Johnny.”
Heald continued:
“Then we had to experience a little bit of growth and then we had to bring back, that fearful figure. Once we brought him back in Season 2, we began the work of getting into John Kreese’s past. Not going so far back, but going back to the in-between years, the years after Karate Kid Part III and redeeming him a little bit in the way that he was a broken man who has regret in his life and was only trying to help.
But once we’ve taken the leap of doing what we did at the end of season two and seeing Kreese, actually take a stranglehold to Cobra Kai, and take it back from Johnny. It required a little bit more digging to continue to have the audience to be willing, to not necessarily be on Kreese’s side, but to understand what his side even is, rather than just have him be a mustache twirling figure, who’s going to come in and grab things.”
Who else thinks Kreese is the best bad guy for the Cobra Kai arch? And what did you think of season three?
Source: ComicBook
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