‘Cobra Kai’ Creators Discuss Terry Silver in Upcoming Season

YouTube Terry Silver and Daniel LaRusso train together in "The Karate Kid Part III."

In “The Karate Kid Part III,” the character Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) was a villainous businessman, who had an intense loyalty to John Kreese (Martin Kove). The billionaire attempts to ruin Daniel LaRusso’s (Ralph Macchio) life as a favor to his long-time friend. While his plan does not succeed, it seems that the character will be getting another chance to terrorize the New Jersey native in “Cobra Kai.”

The Show’s Creators Discussed Terry Silver in August 2021

As fans are aware, Griffith will be portraying Silver yet again in “Cobra Kai” season 4, which will debut in December 2021. During an August interview with AwardsWatch, the show’s creators, Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald spoke about the character. The interviewer, Dewey Singleton, asked “what’s Terry Silver’s motivation” behind him returning to Encino, California at the request of Kreese for the second time. 

Hurwitz explained that the show’s creators were unable to share “the details of what’s in Terry’s head,” as they did not want to spoil “Cobra Kai” season 4. 

“What we can say about Terry is, you know, 35 years have passed, you know, since we’ve seen him and we’re going to get to see kind of where’s he’s landed right now, we pick up with him today. We get to see where he’s at today. We get to see, you know, in what ways he’s the same, in what ways he’s different, and what his motivations are,” said Hurwitz. 

The executive producer shared that Silver “can still kick a**” and practices the martial arts. 

“He still knows karate, I mean he’s a tough guy, but, you know, who knows what his motivations are and exactly what he has in store for this season. I don’t think we can, you know, say specifically how he’s going to react to everything that’s going on right now in the Valley,” said Hurwitz. 

Schlossberg then pointed out that Silver did not have the strongest reasoning to harass Daniel in “The Karate Kid Part III.” 

“All we know about him for the people who haven’t seen season 4 is what you saw in ‘The Karate Kid III’ and his motivation in that was just, you know, to just help his friend and you see the lengths he’s willing to go to,” said Schlossberg. 

He went on to say the show’s writers have tried to present the events of “The Karate Kid III,” which is known for being outlandish, as more realistic for “Cobra Kai” season 4. 

“What we do is that we take ‘The Karate Kid III’ we look at it and we try to give it that Christopher Nolan treatment of like how do we try to make this feel as real today as possible, while like not retconning what we saw in ‘Karate Kid III’ so, you know, you’ll — our hope is that like it’s weird what we’re doing we’re trying to entertain the audience but also make what ‘Karate Kid III’ was like this piece of canon that actually is true,” said Schlossberg. 

Singleton then questioned if Silver changed his villainous ways. 

“Maybe he’s worse, maybe he’s been torturing other teenagers for the next 30 plus years. You never know, it could have stayed exactly the same. He could be worse, he could be better,” asserted Heald. 

William ‘Billy’ Zabka Also Commented on Terry Silver

During a separate August 2021 AwardsWatch interview, William “Billy” Zabka, who portrays Johnny Lawrence, also commented on Silver’s role in “Cobra Kai” season 4. 

“Imagine Terry Silver in 1984, 5, 6 whenever we met him. I think it was ’86 and slap 35 years on him. And imagine where he is today. And let’s see what he brings,” said Zabka. 

The actor also teased that he was not positive where Silver’s loyalty lies in the upcoming season. 

“Even when we were shooting I couldn’t tell if he was a good guy or a bad guy,” quipped Zabka. 

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