Cobra Kai Bosses Lock Horns On Kreese And Silver's Ultimate Fate: 'This Rivalry Needed An Explosive, Climactic Finish' But...

The following contains spoilers for Episode 14 of Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 3.

After all these years, is franchise baddie John Kreese a changed man?

That question was top of mind when we spoke with Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg about the karate drama's final five episodes (Part 3 — including the series finale — is now available to stream on Netflix).

"I think he is redeemed as much as Sensei Kreese can be," Hurwitz tells TVLine in the video above. "Kwon's death shook him to his core. This is a man who, when we first met him in a flashback, was a good person inside who was dealing with a lot of tragedy... Seeing a student die as a result of his own rage impacted him and made him, very late in life, decide to apologize for the mistakes that he made... That scene between Johnny and Kreese was a powerful one for us. Billy Zabka became a teenager again in that scene."

Kreese's guilty conscience also led him to confront Terry Silver, the man who was still pulling strings behind the scenes to keep the Sekai Taikai on track. Their final conflict goes down on Silver's yacht in the middle of the open water, as Silver ridicules Kreese for his complicated relationship with Johnny. It doesn't take long for things to turn physical. Silver comes at Kreese with a broken bottle, but Kreese flicks a lit cigar at the guy's face, distracting him long enough to kick the bottle out of his hands. Mid-scuffle, a gas can spills all over the deck. After Silver pins Kreese to the ground, Kreese grabs the cigar and tosses it into the gasoline making the entire yacht go kablooey.

So that's the end of the Miyagiverse's biggest and baddest villains ever, right? Maybe. It depends on which of the three creators you ask.

"To be honest, we never actually see the bodies," offers Schlossberg, as Hurwitz smiles and shakes his head in the seat next to him.

"Two of us think they're dead!" Hurwitz interjects.

Schlossberg counters: "You build this thing, you put it out there and then the audience takes it and can interpret it in all different ways... We knew that we teed up this rivalry between these two villainous Cobra Kai characters in a way that needed to have an explosive, climactic finish."

Watch the co-creators delightfully rib each other in the full interview embedded above. Then tell us in the comments: Are you Team Schlossberg or Team Hurwitz and Heald?