Xolo Maridueña Was Afraid For His Character In Cobra Kai Season 3

Cobra Kai is one of the most addictive shows currently going on. The show is famous of keeping fans wanting more as it often ends with a cliffhanger. Cobra Kai season 2 was no different, as it ended with Xolo Maridueña’s Miguel Diaz slipping into a coma.

Diaz’s coma was a result of a fight between him and Robby Keene, who came out the better man. The character’s precarious situation left many concerned over what will be his future going ahead. As it turns out, Maridueña was just as concerned over it.

Maridueña’s character does eventually come out of coma in season 3, but he’s unable to feel his legs. It wasn’t until episode 5 that Diaz is again able to use his legs, as his mentor Johnny Lawrence takes him to a Dee Snider concert. The actor revealed in a December 2020 Zoom roundtable that he knew his role was going to get very different.

I was like ‘oh dang, I’m not going to be able to do stunts for a while’. That’s going to be a bummer, but in that first episode, I got a chance to re-enact some of the All Valley tournament fights which was pretty fun and they put a new spin on it so I really enjoyed that.

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Diaz’s scenes where he was incapacitated were, however, rather easy to film. The actor rather quickly realized that all his scenes were from the hospital, and they were all filmed in a quick succession.

I feel like up until maybe the fifth episode, it feels like a lot of my scenes were filmed kind of in the same chunk… When you see it on screen you’re like, ‘Oh crap, he’s in the hospital for a couple of episodes,’ but I feel like having all of the scripts beforehand allowed us to take a big chunk of filming and just clump it together.

Maridueña had more concerns over his character, such as how Diaz might come to distrust his mentor of teaching him mercy. Other concerns were the psychological damage which came from him being away from the things which drive him to be better. His character went through a lot of healing through the season, which ended on a grand note of Daniel LaRusso’s Miyagi Do with Johnny’s Eagle Fang being unified.

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