There’s a snake in the grass and his name is Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith). After framing and sending John Kreese (Martin Kove) to jail in Cobra Kai’s Season 4 finale, the conniving sensei is now in charge of the dojo.
If you’ve seen The Karate Kid Part III, then you’d know just how slick he can be. Terry tricks a young Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) into training with him for the 1985 All-Valley Tournament, secretly plotting Daniel’s loss. Although his ulterior motive fails, he’s determined to finish what he started 37 years ago.
🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
Now a sensei, Daniel squares off with his past tormentor in Episode 5, abandoning his Miyagi-Do philosophy of never striking first. Although Daniel loses, he gets a rematch in the finale when he defeats Terry — with a little help from a move he hasn’t used in nearly four decades: the crane kick.
Below, Macchio and Griffith break down their two epic battles with Tudum. Don’t worry — there’s no bad blood between the actors.
First of all, what’s it been like working together again?
Thomas Ian Griffith: It’s funny because Ralph and I were about the same age when we did The Karate Kid Part III, and here we are all these years later. Coming on in Season 4, I’m going, “Oh my God, is this crazy that we’re doing this?” It feels like we picked right up from where we were.
[Ralph] is always a great acting partner. Now granted, I’ve been a martial artist my whole life and it’s not fair. So it’s like, how do we make that work? But Ralph rose to the occasion. He went for it. I had bruises for weeks out. [laughs] We could trust each other and go to that place that’s very fulfilling for the fans.
Ralph Macchio: Thomas knows what he’s doing. The good thing about that is that he knows how to stop a kick from hitting your head, and his control is impeccable. Thank God, because he’s 6'6" and I’m not. He was very careful. We’re both theater guys so we did have some rehearsal time, which often we don’t on Cobra Kai because we’re so up against it budgetwise and schedulewise.
The Episode 5 fight makes a reference to The Karate Kid Part III scene where Terry pushes Daniel to the point where his knuckles are bleeding. What was it like filming that sequence?
Macchio: For LaRusso in that fight, he was fighting from a place of anger and unhinged. It was a pretty brutal fight by Karate Kid standards. I think Cobra Kai standards are getting deeper and darker and more intense. There’s blood now, and we see that more occasionally. It was nice to have the flashbacks to the knuckles. [Co-creators] Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg, who write this show, do a beautiful job of always tying it into the source material, be it the themes or the action sequences.
Griffith: We really wanted to approach these fights as acting scenes. What are we bringing? Where are we at? Can we track that psychology? Where’s the beginning, middle and end? Why does Silver win? Why does LaRusso lose? We really spent a lot of time talking about that.
In Episode 5, Daniel is at a low point and he goes against his philosophy. He’s the one that initiates the fight. Would that fight have started? I don’t know. Terry still wants it to. Terry Silver is egging him on. There’s almost an honor system between the two senseis to say, “If you go there, this is what’s going to happen.”
As for the big finale fight between Daniel and Terry, how did you switch around the power dynamics?
Griffith: Terry Silver’s a little out of control. He’s losing his way. They’re coming to his home, you’re seeing him drinking and you go, “This is not Terry.” When he gets to that fight with Chozen, all of a sudden the stakes have gone way up.
Macchio: In the finale fight, it’s more from a perspective of being centered and balanced and very grounded in Daniel’s Miyagi wisdom and history.
Did you both encounter any challenges with filming this season’s action scenes?Griffith: Choreographing the fights were a challenge because we didn’t have as much time as we wanted. I don’t want to be thinking of choreography. I want to be thinking of what Terry Silver’s doing, but you have to always have that control in your physicality.
Macchio: Going back to pull the crane kick out 38 years later. It was a little easier back when I was 21. I remember I had a compression thing on my knee, often as young guys do that [chuckles], just to just keep everything warm. It’s injury prevention. Once you get to our age, you really have to be careful.
We did the first two takes of that moment taking down Silver, and the kick was not quite there. I was like, “I can’t have this.” You never want to be there when you’re recalling one of the most iconic things in the history of the franchise. I took that compression thing off my knee, and it made me feel like 10 pounds lighter.
