Griffin Santopietro Talks Anthony's Journey in Cobra Kai and Reveals What He Hopes to Explore in Season 6

[AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON COMICBOOK.COM]

When season five begins, Anthony is heading down a different path than he ever expected to, and things have definitely been better. "I think he is in a bad place, only in the fact that it seems like he lost all of his friends, and is being bullied, and doesn't really have that big of a connection with his family," Santopietro said. "So I think he's pretty alone at the beginning of the season, but through his relationship that he grows with Sam and the Dojo, I think things really start to look up for him by the end."

While the dynamic with the rest of his family has been somewhat strained in past seasons, season 5 sees that bond start to re-form, and though he also finds karate like his father, it isn't nearly in the same sort of fashion. "Yeah, I mean he probably saw that it was kind of ruining everyone's life around him. So he probably never had a huge want to be a part of that. But then he gets forced into it by Kenny, and one thing that I felt was nice, especially with the Kenny stuff, is that Anthony doesn't fully find karate through revenge like some characters, I think he finds it in a nicer way with his sister. He kind of finds his people to be around rather than just joining it so that he could beat so and so up."

That does also happen to be why Kenny found karate, but with everything he's been put through by Anthony and his one-time friends, you also understand why he seeks it out and becomes what he once hated, and that will weigh on Anthony as well, and Santopietro does hope they can make amends down the line in the series.

"Yeah, I think that it's definitely a lot of guilt more than anger, especially since I feel like whenever he wasn't around his friends every chance he got he tried to apologize to him, but he kind of already pushed him too far at that point. So I think that he wants a relationship with him. I think that he wants to make up for what he did to him, but it does not feel like Kenny wishes the same," Santopietro said. As for reconciling with Kenny, Santopietro said "I hope so. I think Anthony really wants one, so I really hope it happens. But I don't know, it could go either way. I think it can get so much worse or they become best friends."

Fans are eagerly awaiting a season 6 renewal, which seems very possible due to the success of season 5. If it does get a new season, we had to ask what Santopietro would want to see explored for his character and the show overall. For starters, Santopietro would love to see how the relationship between Anthony and his father Daniel can continue to grow and evolve, especially now that Anthony is involved in Karate.

"Yeah, I think that in season four we got to see that they actually started talking, which is something that we never really saw them do. And for season six, I would really like to, one, I would like to see what Daniel thinks about his son doing karate now, because we never really got a moment where Daniel's like, 'Oh, you're in the Dojo now?' He wasn't really a part of getting him into that. So I think I would be interested to see what he thinks about that and get to explore more of why they haven't had this great relationship before," Santopietro said. "I mean Anthony and Daniel never really seemed to be as close as Sam was with him, and Daniel obviously didn't grow up with his dad around, so I bet there's a lot of interesting stuff that could be explored there."

Now that he is a part of the dojo, Griffin would be keen on seeing Anthony take on a bigger role there as well. "I think that Anthony has found, again, I guess this is through his way of finding karate in a nicer, more wholesome way. I don't think he will have that wanting to join another Dojo. I don't think he will want that, but I think in season five we get to see that he's very strategic and he plans things very well. So I think it'd be really cool to see him take more of that strategist position amongst the Dojo."

And as for Anthony's social life, that would be worth exploring as well, and he would love to see Leah brought back into the mix to move that story forward. "I think we saw that Anthony does think about that a lot with Leah, so I'd like to see her come back and see how he responds to that, how he and Kenny kind of respond to that together, pretty interesting. And then, yeah, I think just to maybe, I mean, the poor guy, he's kind of been ignored by everyone, so to have someone to have a really close relationship to would probably be pretty good for him," Santopietro said.