Yahoo Lifestyle Martin Kove Reveals an Alternate Ending for John Kreese in 'Cobra Kai' (Exclusive)
SPOILER ALERT! This article contains events from the final season of Cobra Kai.
They say Cobra Kai never dies but John Kreese (Martin Kove) sure seems to have met his end in the penultimate episode of the series. In a fight with longtime friend-turned-rival Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffin) on a yacht, his enemy seems to be getting the better of him. But Kreese has one last trick up his sleeve: He tosses a lit cigar into some gasoline and, boom, the whole boat goes up in flames. See ya, Johnny.
"I loved it," Kove exclusively tells Parade of his character's ending. Although he also shares that, in a deleted scene that would have played in the series finale, his character was potentially spotted alive after all.
"It was my hand with the ring—just the shot of the hand—taking the magazine that says, 'Whatever happened to Terry Silver?'" he explains. "But [the showrunners] didn't feel it was necessary," Kove adds. "It might have been a little hokey to have the guy live through an explosion." Fair enough.
Reflecting on his time on Cobra Kai, Kove expresses gratitude to creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg for giving his character more of an emotional arc than he had in the original franchise.
"When I first started the show, I asked the writers—we all met back in 2017, and they wanted me to come aboard after hiring Billy [William Zapka] and Ralph [Macchio]," Kove recalls. "And I said, 'Well, I'm not interested in playing the character like I played him in Karate Kid...' I said, 'I want to play him with an arc. I want to play him emotionally. I want people to know why he was so difficult and the villain...' And they agreed to it. ...I love playing moments with sadness and vulnerability more than playing tough."
Nonetheless, playing tough is what Kove is known for—and even Heald, Hurwitz and Schlossberg assumed he was a tough guy in real life, too.
"When we met, they thought I'd be really upset at them [when they told me] I was coming in Episode 10, Season 1—they thought I wanted to come in earlier," Kove says. "And they were so taken by the character being tough that they thought that I would, you know, get real angry and get pissed off and maybe get physical at the restaurant we were at. And I thought that was hysterical, because we're pros, you know, we're not going to get physical just because I play somewhat of an asshole."
As for what he'll play next, Kove will go from the karate gym to the wrestling ring in Queen of the Ring, a movie about female professional wrestler Mildred Burke. Then, he'll be in The Dink, a Ben Stiller-produced movie about pickleball, in which he plays ex-husband to Mary Steenburgen's character. He's also producing a Western with son Jesse Kove called The Prodigal, which he describes as "the story of an old gun fighter who bonds with a with a 12-year-old kid, and they're after the bad guys together"—a project that perhaps shows how Kove would like to be viewed when all is said and done.
"In short, I'd love to have a legacy where I created some heroes," Kove tells Parade. "I don't think kids today have a lot of heroes. You know, Marvel comic books are kind of—they're great, but they're manufactured heroes. They're not vulnerable, like John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. I grew up with 35mm Westerns on primetime TV in the 60s. So you had your choice of who to emulate. I think kids need to see what I mean."
Cobra Kai is available to watch in its entirety on Netflix.
