Summary

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with Cobra Kai star Mary Mouser.

During her third Ladies Night conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Mouser digs into the final five episodes of the hit Karate Kid spin-off series.

She discusses her final scenes with Ralph Macchio and Xolo Maridueña, and explains what the Cobra Kai dojo has come to mean to her.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Cobra Kai.]From the moment I met Mary Mouser during the earliest stages of Cobra Kai’s run on YouTube, one thing was abundantly clear – this is a wildly talented artist who pours her whole heart into her work and is quite excited to talk about the extensive amount of thought and care she puts into it. That immediately made her an interviewee I’d keep chasing and now, seven years later, not only have we had many wonderful press day conversations, but Mouser has officially become our second Collider Ladies Night three-time guest.
On top of that, that great care and attention to detail Mouser has when tackling her work makes her an optimal fit to play the Cobra Kai character with an especially mature and nuanced arc throughout the show’s six-season run. At the start of Season 6, Part 3, Sam LaRusso and the other Miyagi-do fighters think the Sekai Taikai is over. When that changes, Sam is put in an especially complex situation. Not only would she have to face off against her friend, Tory (Peyton List), but she’d be doing so for nothing in the grand scheme of things because of Miyagi-do’s extreme point deficit. Sam opts to quit, a choice that, more often than not, is frowned upon on screen, and in life. However, courtesy of strong writing and development from Cobra Kai’s Big 3, Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg, and Mouser’s dedication to understanding and justifying the choice from the character perspective, Cobra Kai manages to recontextualize what it means to quit.
During her third appearance on Collider Ladies Night, Mouser looks back on some early Cobra Kai scenes that set the foundation for Sam to be able to make such a choice, she discusses where things land for Sam and her father, and also for Sam and Miguel, and she explains what Cobra Kai means to her and her character after six seasons.
The ‘Cobra Kai’ Season 1 Scene That Heavily Defined Sam’s Arc

“It was very obviously an accident, but accidents still have repercussions.”

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‘Cobra Kai’: Mary Mouser on the Sam & Miguel Scene She Helped Develop

Mouser also discusses Sam’s situation with Tory, her relationship with Miguel, and so much more!

In order to pull off such an epic finale, team Cobra Kai had to be planting key seeds all along to ensure they’d actually earn such a big finish for the main ensemble. Mouser, in particular, found great success in that respect. One of the very first scenes that’d help her build a strong foundation for Samantha LaRusso? It was actually one of her audition scenes.

“The me and Ralph chem read scene where we did the little ‘Jersey tough’ moment, and then getting to actually film that in the room and being on a set, the camera’s looking at me, and Ralph Macchio is fist-pumping me and having this father-daughter moment, I was like, ‘This is Sam. Sam’s got it good. She’s got somebody who loves her so much.’ That was the pillar of who Sam felt like to me.”

After that came a moment that would heavily define Sam’s relationship with karate. Mouser continued:

“Another one was the end of Season 1, the beach, where Miguel knocks her to the floor. Initially it was kind of a thing of like, ‘Oh, it was an accident.’ It’s very obviously an accident. And yes, sure, it was very obviously an accident, but accidents still have repercussions and I think that, for me, became a thing, especially going into Sam’s relationship with karate going forward, of seeing how it could turn somebody that she loved from so sweet to so hard and being physically impacted by that. I feel like that then set everything into motion for me in terms of Sam’s relationship with martial arts and the dedication to making sure she never strayed far enough to maybe be the person who would have that same impact of hurt.”

One of Sam’s biggest decisions in the final five episodes does not work without these Season 1 moments.
‘Cobra Kai’ Just Completely Recontextualized Giving Up

“That’s not where I thought this was going. I have to make sense of this.”

In Season 6, Episode 13, “Skeletons,” Sam decides to quit the Sekai Taikai.
How many times were you encouraged, “Don’t be a quitter,” growing up? In fact, it’s an adage that’s often repeated for adults. However, Cobra Kai just proved that in certain cases, stepping away could be the best decision.
After Robby’s (Tanner Buchanan) devastating loss to Axel (Patrick Luwis), the Iron Dragons have 160 points and Miyagi-do has a mere 93. As Demetri explains (Gianni DeCenzo) and Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) further emphasizes, it probably doesn’t matter if Sam wins her fight. Miyagi-do will still lose the tournament. Sam hears this and is clearly dejected, so I asked Mouser how things might have panned out if Robby’s fight had gone in his favor. Would things have played out differently for Sam?

“Yes, but I’m glad it happened the way it did. I, as Sam in that moment, I remember I felt so lost— lost looking at the paper and, like I said, as a scene, seeing that and then seeing that she didn’t go on. I felt so, again, just like, ‘Holy shit, that’s not where I thought this was going. I have to make sense of this.’ Because to me, what Sam’s looking for, the ‘why am I fighting,’ all along it’s Miyagi’s legacy, Miyagi’s legacy, it’s Miyagi’s legacy. But it’s not Mr. Miyagi’s legacy alone. The whole point of it, and the thing that I personally have taken away from martial arts, is the belief that you have all of these tools in your belt so that you don’t have to use them, and the power of teaching that lesson to more people. I think Sam has this belief that it’s almost this purpose to share that message and to make sure that nobody ends up so hurt as her friends have been by this world.”

Mouser continued:

“Had Robby won, and therefore made it easier for Sam with the points to have a really good fighting chance to succeed, it would have been the Miyagi-Do name on that trophy, it would be on those websites, it would be in those articles, it would be on the news stations, and that message could then usurp the message that had been fighting to get put out there, this negative, hateful, spiteful mentality, and the power of being able to cover it, put that label right over the top of it and say, ‘No, you don’t even have to look at that.’ This right here, to me, felt like the purpose. Robby losing then takes that away. There’s no victory in Sam just fighting to high hell just to collect a bunch of points that aren’t going to mean anything. The one dojo that comes out on top is still going to be the same dojo. And, at the same time, they’re going to look like they’re believing in the exact thing that they’re trying to convince people not to believe in. So I was so grateful for the opportunity to have her learn that lesson. I think that’s the ultimate lesson that Sam needed to learn from day one.”

Daniel Passes the Torch to Samantha

“There’s no Sam without Daniel and no Daniel without Mr. Miyagi.”

Image via Netflix

Another curious and very effective choice the Cobra Kai creators make with this storyline is how they depict Sam coming to this conclusion.
As we see in the show, after Robby’s match, Sam and Daniel have a conversation about Sam’s upcoming fight and where Miyagi-do stands in the competition. Sam tells him she doesn’t know what she’s fighting for anymore, and Daniel admits he’s been struggling with similar feelings. He’s been off balance. He admits, “I wish I had the answers for you, kiddo.”
Turns out, he’d get the answers later that night during a dream involving Mr. Miyagi. When a broken Daniel tells Miyagi, “We can’t win,” Miyagi replies, “Remember, Miyagi teach win, lose, no matter. No need fight anymore.” I expected Daniel to then relay this message to Sam and essentially give her the answer. But, in a beautiful twist, Sam’s already a step ahead of him. When Daniel comes down for breakfast, she’s already made her decision on her own with the lessons she’s learned throughout her years studying karate.

“That’s one of my favorite scenes. That’s probably my favorite scene that we got to film this season because, first of all, it feels like a bookend to that initial conversation, that very first scene that I got to have connecting with Ralph. At that time it’s, ‘Don’t let them borrow my swim trunks next time, but I’ll try to be more open to the fact that you’re growing up.’ And then, being able to show him, ‘Hey, Dad,’ — I’m gonna try not to cry — ‘You held my hand the whole way through it, and I’ve done it. I did the growing up.’ Point being, I was, again, so grateful as a young person in general, but specifically as a young woman, being able to have Samantha have the power in that moment and support, obviously, because there’s no Sam without Daniel and no Daniel without Mr. Miyagi. It’s the passing of the baton, and to me, it felt like this thing of, ‘Okay, Mr. Miyagi brought me this torch in this dream, and let me go and pass it on to Sam, and Sam’s already running ahead and like, just throw it my way and I’ll keep going.’ I love that idea that that, to me, is the only way in which there could be a next story for Samantha, would be from that moment.”

What Does Cobra Kai Now Mean to Mary? (And to Samantha?)

“This maybe feels like the purest version of what Cobra Kai could have been from the beginning.”

Image via Netflix

One of many standout elements of the Cobra Kai series finale is how the creators not only bring it right back to Cobra Kai, but do so in a way that doesn’t dismantle what the dojo has always been about, but rather, reframes it. They took something that has long been viewed as a villainous entity, parsed through why the darkness took hold and, in the process, found and celebrated the light that’s been in it since the very start. So, what does Cobra Kai now mean to Mouser? She began:

“In Season 1, when people would ask me about what the show was and, ‘What does it mean to you? What does it represent?’ Or people who hadn’t heard about the series being a spin-off yet, and, ‘Oh, it’s the original Cobra Kai? Are you sure?’ To me, what I used to say, my little one line that encapsulated it for me was, ‘It’s how to build a bully, watching how a bully gets made.’ How you can take input from one source and you can make it your entire self, and how you can easily be misled if the person that you’re letting lead you has the wrong intentions, for better or worse, meaning to or not, well-meaning or not, as Johnny was obviously well-meaning in his intentions with Miguel.”

She continued:

“My point now that I’ve come to is it’s duality. It’s human nature. It’s the natural instinct to want to fit in and how hard it is to be the person to go against the grain. If everyone in your dojo is strike first, strike hard, no mercy, how hard is it to be the person to step aside from that and to be vulnerable and to let the pain actually hit you and actually touch you and really feel the impacts of that instead of running away from it, and how to take that and turn it into something really wonderful and beautiful and strengthening to your body and strengthening to your mind. That’s, at least, Mary’s perspective on it.”

Image via Netflix

As for Samantha’s perspective, here’s how Mouser quite beautifully summed that up:

“Sam, I think, might say that Cobra Kai is still Cobra Kai. It’s more that this maybe feels like the purest version of what Cobra Kai could have been from the beginning had it been in safe hands. If you trace it back to its lineage, of how Kreese came to know it and his senseis, and the whole story of it all, what it could have been if somebody had just imbued a little heart in it from the beginning.”

Eager to hear even more from Mouser on her journey with the series and wrapping things up with Season 6, Part 3? You can find just that in our full interview in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the conversation in podcast form below:

Cobra Kai

Release Date

2018 – 2024

Network

Netflix, YouTube Premium

Showrunner

Jon Hurwitz

Directors

Hayden Schlossberg, Jon Hurwitz, Joel Novoa, Jennifer Celotta, Steven K. Tsuchida, Sherwin Shilati, Marielle Woods, Steve Pink, Lin Oeding, Michael Grossman

Writers

Josh Heald, Ashley Darnall, Chris Rafferty, Bill Posley

Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 3 is now available to stream on Netflix.
Watch Here