Cobra Kai: How The Season 2 Finale Brawl Was Filmed (& Why It Feels So Real)

Cobra Kaiseason 2 ended with a spectacular and visceral all-out brawl between the students of the Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai dojos. To achieve the intense degree of verisimilitude, Cobra Kai’s executive producers Hayden Schlossberg, Jon Hurwitz, and John Heald, along with stars Xolo Mariduena (Miguel Diaz), Mary Mouser (Samantha LaRusso), Tanner Buchanan (Robby Keane), and Peyton List (Tory Nichols) and the show’s stunt team, worked together under an incredibly tight schedule at the Atlanta high school location the production took over for the shoot.

The climactic Cobra Kai season 2 melee was ignited by the rivalry between Sam and Tory, which had built all season along with the overall animosity between the two enemy dojos. On the first day of school at West Valley High, Tory commandeered the school intercom and threatened Sam. The two met up in the hallway where Tory forced Sam to admit she kissed her boyfriend Miguel, who is also LaRusso’s ex. The two girls started fighting, which then their boyfriends Robby and Miguel, who have been feuding since Cobra Kai season 1, into the fray. Meanwhile, other Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do frenemies like Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) and Demetri (Gianni Decenzo) entered the brawl to settle their scores. The wild fracas consumed the high school but ended in tragedy when Robby kicked Miguel off a balcony. The fall left Diaz hospitalized with critical injuries.

According to Cobra Kai‘s producers and the lead actors, who broke the fight down shot-by-shot on Netflix’s YouTube, the crew only had four days to sho0t the entirety of Cobra Kai season 2 finale brawl, with just a couple of days of prep time between the actors and the stunt team. The limited amount of time meant that the individual rivalries such as Hawk vs. Demetri had to be shot simultaneously with the two main brawls between the male and female leads. This required two or three units shooting concurrently, with the producers grabbing Steadicams and filming the personal ancillary face-offs while the main unit shot Sam, Tory, Robby, and Miguel’s coverage. In fact, much of the later portions of the 10-minute-long sequence were shot in a rush on the last day of production, although the final results are seamless.

The centerpiece of the brawl is the frenetic hallway ‘one-er’ (one uninterrupted take) involving Sam vs. Tory and Miguel vs. Robby that also involved several of the students joining the fight before Stingray (Paul Walter Hauser) enters the brawl on behalf of Cobra Kai. One Steadicam shot the actors performing incredibly precise choreography that also incorporated “Texas Switches” so that their stunt doubles could enter the frame to take the more dangerous hits and falls and before being seamlessly replaced by the actors. The one-er is about 80-85 seconds of the roughly 10-minute fight sequence, and the intensity is ramped up by the presence of extras playing students who loudly helping the fight feel real.

By the last day of filming of the fight’s climax where Sam defeats Tory and Miguel takes his fateful fall off the balcony, the actors and their stunt doubles were legitimately banged up. Mary Mouser went to the ER for her injured hand and performed parts of the fight with her fingers taped up, while Tanner Buchanan’s stunt double had his false teeth knocked out of his mouth after taking a fall (which led to the extras joining in to find his missing teeth). In addition, Xolo Mariduena kicked a railing so hard he bent the metal.

Miguel’s horrific fall was shot with Xolo held by a wire and filmed at a third of the speed as he flailed and plummeted. His stunt person Noah performed the actual fall off the balcony after Robby kicked Miguel and then Noah finished the stunt by actually hitting the railing and staircase at the end. The result of all the Cobra Kai cast and crew’s efforts is easily the most eye-popping and thrilling fight sequence in the history of The Karate Kid franchise, and it also upped the ante of what fans can expect next in Cobra Kai season 3.

Cobra Kaiis available to stream on Netflix.

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