We just shared the non-spoiler portion of our Cobra Kai Season 3 chat with Ralph Macchio and William Zabka. Now it’s time to put the spotlight on two of their students, Xolo Maridueña and Jacob Bertrand.

Maridueña has his work cut out for him this time around with Miguel recovering from the injury he suffered at the end of Season 2. Maridueña spent much of Seasons 1 and 2 focusing on Miguel’s pursuit of becoming a top student at the dojo. With that prominent anchor for the character out of the picture right now, what was the most challenging aspect of the pivot required from Maridueña? Here’s what he said:

“Karate plays such a large part in Miguel’s life and I think having that taken away … is really scary for Miguel and I think it’s something that everyone is going through for the first time. Obviously nobody knows how to prepare for this, and Miguel especially, so the journey of reconciling with Johnny, figuring out where he stands with his mom, seeing if he’s going to walk again, I think all of that happening at the same time can be a little bit stressful, but hopefully we can come out on the other side and be triumphant.”

As for Bertrand, Hawk is officially John Kreese’s (Martin Kove) main man at Cobra Kai and he relishes that position, but that doesn’t mean it’s always smooth sailing for Hawk and Kreese. Here’s what Bertrand told us about working on some tense scenes with Kove:

“First of all, love Marty! He’s the man. When they first told me I was gonna have a bunch of scenes with him, I was stoked. When he is in the gi, he will walk around as Kreese. He keeps that energy and that intensity up all the time, so I think being his scene partner, that constantly being there really helps. Because he is, he’s the dominant force in almost every single scene he’s in. Especially a lot of my scenes. I’m coming up as his student, up to him questioning some of the things he’s talking about. There’s so much you can learn from the guy. He is such a great actor and he’s done it all, seen it all and I just love working with that guy.”

If you’d like to hear even more from Maridueña and Bertrand, you can check out the entirety of our non-spoiler conversation at the top of this article right now, but be sure to come back after binging Cobra Kai Season 3 on Netflix on January 1st because Maridueña and Bertrand also weighed in on some key spoiler details for their characters.

Xolo Maridueña and Jacob Bertrand

• Bertrand discusses his interest in directing and how the Cobra Kai team helped him make a short film. (You can watch that short right here.)
• Maridueña on the challenges of getting into the headspace of a character who loses the thing he loves.
• Bertrand talks about working with Martin Kove more this season.