What’s in Mr. Miyagi’s box? Cobra Kai Season 6 mystery revealed

Cobra Kai features a mystery at the heart of Season 6 – namely, what’s in Mr. Miyagi’s secret box. Here are the details of those contents in full, including how they might play into the season climax in 2025.

Season 6 Part 1 of the Karate Kid TV sequel is now streaming. You can read our recaps of the new Cobra Kai here, while the twist in the final episode is explained here.

Unlike previous seasons, this series of Cobra Kai is being split into three batches of five episodes each, with Part 2 dropping in November, and Part 3 arriving in early 2025, before the release of a new Karate Kid movie.

Meaning Part 1 is mainly concerned with set-ups that will pay-off in those future installments, most notably a mystery concerning a box that belonged to Daniel LaRusso’s late former mentor. SPOILERS ahead…

Mr. Miyagi’s box explained

During Episode 3 of Season 6, Daniel finds a trap-door in one of Mr. Miyagi’s rooms, underneath which there’s a box that contains secrets that suggest Miyagi previously committed a crime, and possibly changed his identity.

Here are the contents of Mr. Miyagi’s box:

• Boxing gloves
• Coin
• Scrolls
• Newspaper clipping
• Passport
• Address
• Bandana

All of which are clues concerning the Miyagi mystery that grows throughout Part 1 of Season 6.

The newspaper clipping – from May 3, 1947 – is headlined ‘Police search for assailant.’ The accompanying article reads, “Police are searching for the culprit in a violent robbery and assault. Jim Watkins of Lodi was hospitalized after a severe beating and the theft of a valuable necklace. He identified his attacker as Keisuke Miyagi.”

Daniel’s former teacher was called Nariyoshi Miyagi, so Daniel immediately suggests that Keisuke is his brother. But then he finds a passport containing Mr. Miyagi’s photo, but a different name and birth date.

This actually connects Cobra Kai to The Next Karate Kid. As while in The Karate Kid Part II we learn that Mr. Miyagi’s first name is Nariyoshi, during The Next Karate Kid, it’s said to be Keisuke.

That might be a continuity error between movies, but here it’s being used to complicate Miyagi’s past, and maybe even open the door for Next Karate Kid Hilary Swank to appear in Cobra Kai.

As for the boxing gloves, they connect with the address, which is the location of an old boxing club. Daniel heads there to investigate, where he discovers that Mr. Miyagi was a silent partner in the business, causing Daniel to question why his friend never shared that information.

Miyagi’s connection to the Sekai Taikai Tournament in Cobra Kai

The bandana that Daniel finds in the box has little meaning, until he hears from the Sekai Taikai Tournament that his students will be competing in abroad.

The event’s insignia matches the crest on that Miyagi bandana, suggesting a connection, which has Daniel thinking his old friend might have previously fought in the tournament.

While the coin in the box is Chinese, which might be setting up the new Karate Kid movie, which unites LaRusso with Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han, from the 2010 Karate Kid movie.

We’ll have to wait until Part 2 – and maybe even Part 3 – for these mysteries to be solved. But at present, Daniel feels like he maybe never knew the real Mr. Miyagi.

The new Cobra Kai episodes are now streaming on Netflix. Here’s a list of the best new TV shows streaming this month, as well as new movies streaming.