Are Those Cobra Kai Characters Actually Dead? The Showrunners Are Being Cheeky About It

Spoilers to follow for "Cobra Kai" Season 6 Part 3.

"Cobra Kai" has featured plenty of twists and surprises. It's a show full of scenes that feel like absolute shocks to the system, as though they've been lifted straight out of a soap opera or sports anime. We're talking about moments like Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) unexpectedly teaming up with all of his former rivals — Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), and Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan) — to fight Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), or that time Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) was nearly paralyzed back in Season 2.

Now, "Cobra Kai" Season 6 Part 3 has upped the ante in every capacity. Following the Sekai Taikai being interrupted by a tragic death, the last five episodes of the season see Terry Silver charming his way into un-canceling the tournament and bringing the show back to where it all began — the site of the 1984 All-Valley Karate Tournament. These episodes are not only filled with references aplenty to the original "Karate Kid," but also major reveals and shocking moments. Arguably, though, no scene is quite as shocking as when Martin Kove's John Kreese has a change of heart and battles the franchise's big bad, Terry Silver, ultimately blowing up both Terry and himself to smithereens.

It's big, it's grandiose, and it's absolutely ridiculous, but most of all, it kicks ass. That being said, are the two karate bad guys really dead? During a roundtable interview /Film took part in, the co-creators of "Cobra Kai" shed some doubt on the matter. When asked about the lack of corpses in the aftermath of the scene, co-creator Hayden Schlossberg said that was by design:

"We could have shown the dead body and said, 'Okay, well, that's that.' We purposely had a very wide shot of the yacht exploding, and there've been amazing stories actually of fire survival and boat explosion survival that leave open the interpretation of all different possibilities. And so just don't count anything out, I would say."

"It was really important to us to have these characters have an exciting, climactic, explosive finale. And we wonder, as the audience, will we see them again or not?" Schlossberg continued. "We have not seen any evidence they're dead."

"Because that doesn't exist. They blew up," added co-creator Josh Heald, quickly jumping in to jokingly "correct" Schlossberg. And yet...

Not only are the creators of "Cobra Kai" being cheeky about whether or not Silver and Kreese actually got blown up to pieces, but they also nearly gave us a definite and somewhat unexpected answer.

According to co-creator Jon Hurwitz, the show's creatives initially shot a scene for the final episode right after the shot of the magazine rack where we see Johnny and Cobra Kai's victory at the Sekai Taikai on the cover of Sports Illustrated. "We actually filmed something where we panned over to another magazine and you saw Terry Silver was still missing," Hurwitz explained. "And then we saw a hand and Martin Kove picked up the magazine."

"It was more for show, for Marty for anything else," Hurwitz quickly clarified. "We kind of knew that it would be ridiculous if you saw Kreese still alive there."

Still, stranger things have happened. Miguel did come back after nearly shattering his spine, while Kreese has already sort of come back from the dead before (at least as far as the public was aware), so why couldn't he have survived the yacht explosion as well? The whole scene was already something straight out of an '80s action movie, and a ridiculous plot twist along these lines wouldn't be out of place in one either.

Still, until that additional scene is publicly released, Silver is very much dead so far as "Cobra Kai" is concerned — and it's all thanks to Kreese. (Now we know why Kove won't return for "Karate Kid: Legends.") As mentioned, the old Cobra Kai sensei has a dramatic crisis of faith in the show's final episodes, having come to realize he's simply done too much evil in his life and has to now try and make up for it.

"That was something that we've talked about from the beginning, that Kreese has had a tortured life," Hurwitz explained, referring to the flashbacks we see throughout "Cobra Kai" to Kreese's time in the U.S. army and how he was introduced to the Cobra Kai way of life. "He had a tough time in life, but we saw that he had a good heart at the center, but life through a lot of tragedy in his path."

Hurwitz confirmed that it was the death of Kwon (Brandon H. Lee), a young student who Kreese led down the wrong path and suffered the consequences after a short amount of time, that made Kreese rethink his choices. This also led to Kreese going on an apology tour, finally recognizing the damage he did to Johnny and thanking him for saving his life before hugging his surrogate son, all before leading the way for Cobra Kai's comeback and eventual victory at the Sekai Taikai.

"That final moment on that boat where when Terry Silver was at his worst and ready to do some pretty dark things. Kreese was not going to allow that," Hurwitz added. "And that led to that climactic scene where he and Terry Silver may or may not have died."

"Cobra Kai" is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.