Mr. Miyagi made a surprise return in the tenth episode of Cobra Kai season 6 through a dream sequence, and a lot of fans were shocked to see him again.
Considering that Pat Morita died in 2005, you might be wondering how they managed to bring back the iconic character on-screen after consistently being mentioned since the first season.
Mr. Miyagi's Return in Cobra Kai Season 6 Episode 10
Episode 10 of Cobra Kai season 6 started with a dream sequence where Daniel LaRusso found himself facing off against a young Mr. Miyagi in a Sekai Takai match.
Throughout the season so far, we've seen Daniel deal with the shocking revelation from Miyagi's past as he learned that his mentor was a brutal fighter during his younger years and ended up killing his opponent when he competed in Sekai Takai.
The dream sequence ended with Daniel seeing the older Miyagi that we know and love (with Morita's likeness) who told him that he will "never tell [him] everything because [he's] never strong enough to accept [the] truth."
Daniel woke up from the nightmare and he was seemingly in panic from the dream that he just experienced.
While Morita's "appearance" in the episode was just brief, it was still a shocking moment that fans can't believe happened as they never thought that the series would ever bring him back on-screen.
How Did Cobra Kai Bring Back Morita's Mr. Miyagi?
In an interview, Cobra Kai showrunners Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg explained why they decided to bring back Miyagi on-screen in the episode.
"Pat and Miyagi are the beating heart of this series and without Mr. Miyagi, there would be no Karate Kid and there would be no Miyagi-verse, as we like to call it. For so many seasons, we’ve told a Miyagi story that was focused on the absence of Mr. Miyagi," Heald said.
"This season, we’re digging into a little bit more of the looming presence of new information, new ideas or a new glimpse into a part of Mr. Miyagi’s life that the series has never focused on. That Daniel has never been aware of."
Heald continued, "So by digging more into that and getting more and more in Daniel’s head with his kind of tortured idea of, ‘What didn’t he know?’... does that affect and infect his opinion of Mr. Miyagi?"
As expected, visual effects and artificial intelligence (AI) were used to bring back Morita's Miyagi on screen. The series' team also managed to get permission from the actor's estate to make his "return" happen.
"There’s a lot of technical things that you need to do with visual effects. There’s obviously talking to Pat’s estate and making sure that they’re aware and that they’re comfortable and that they sign off on that. We’re still coming out of the wild, wild west of AI and visual effects, and we’re entering a place of needing to have some standards in terms of how you present that. You can’t just do anything you want," Heald explained.
"Even though you’re not having an actor there on set, it’s still his likeness. So we went through all of that process, which was important to us and the studio, and feel like we’ve captured this unfortunate vision that Daniel is having of being trapped in this nightmare that he’s been in. He’s been kind of in a waking nightmare and then he’s having a literal nightmare where a Miyagi like we’ve never seen visits him."
What do you think of Miyagi's appearance? Let us know in the comments!
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