For Xolo Maridueña, playing Miguel Diaz one last time was bittersweet. The actor, who will get to play the character one more time in the final season of the show, which releases Part 1 on July 18th, spoke to Remezcla about Latine representation, where Cobra Kai Season 6 finds Miguel and what Latino actors and directors he’d love to work with as his career moves on beyond the show.
When it comes to Miguel and Season 6 of Cobra Kai, Maridueña was clear that he, like any high schooler, doesn’t have things figured out. But, the important part for him is that “this whole journey with Johnny and getting to connect with his roots and his family and friends,” has left Miguel with “a lot of the right tools to embark on this kind of next phase in his life.”
And like Miguel, Maridueña is thinking about that next phase beyond Cobra Kai. He’s already done Blue Beetle, but he admits there are some people he would love to work with. “Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro Iñarritu, those are two directors that I am just in love with. Alfonso Cuarón, I like his stuff as well. Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Oscar Isaac, I really love,” Maridueña shared, before getting more personal “My sister, I’d like to get to do something with my sister as well. She had a little part in Blue Beetle, but she does theater, so I’d like to take the stage with her one day.”
For Maridueña working with other Latine actors is important, because more Latine stories need to be told in general. “No one movie is going to totally capture the Latino experience, but as we make more of them, more people start to realize that the universal experience of being Latino comes in different shapes and colors and sizes and experiences,” he told us.
“We’ve seen kind of a certain lens into what Hollywood thinks being a Latino is about, but I’m really excited for this kind of new wave of us being allowed to really take those stories and grab the bull by the horns,” Maridueña also shared, as we discussed the experience of being both Miguel on Cobra Kai and Jaime on Blue Beetle.
“For so long we had other people telling us what our communities were like and what our lives were like and to get to, you know, approach a character like Miguel honestly and earnestly and from a place of being Ecuadorian myself and the same for Jaime in Blue Beetle…there’s nothing like getting to bring that culture to the big screen. And I think, in the face of some pretty damning statistics and news stories and whatnot, it’s nothing but a pleasure to get to do these roles, to get to show all the different shades of who we are.”
And if Maridueña has one regret when it comes to Cobra Kai, it’s that “my favorite relationship in the show, for my character, at least, has been between Johnny and Miguel. I think that was the one that was introduced the earliest to me and is the one that persisted throughout. I just wish we would have had the chance to do a fight together, like where we’re both beating up someone or fighting someone. That would have been pretty fun.”
Cobra Kai Season 6, Part 1 will be available on Netflix on July 18th. Part 2 premieres November 15, 2024.
