'Cowboy Bebop' will bop no more as Netflix cancels show after one season

Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop will not get a second season. The news, per Deadline, comes just a few weeks after the first 10 episodes dropped on the streaming platform.

The new adaptation of the beloved anime starred John Cho as Spike Speigel, a bounty hunter from the late 21st Century who travels across the solar system and crosses paths with other characters such as fellow bounty hunters Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Danielle Pineda), as well as a very smart corgi named Ein and a young hacker named Ed (Eden Perkins). 

The show was one Netflix marketed heavily — the streamer released several trailers as well as a teaser of the show’s opening credits in the lead up to its Nov. 19 release. The Netflix adaptation also inspired a spin-off comic, a prequel novel, and a making-of book, with the first issue of the comic set to come out on Jan. 19, 2022. 

Reviews for the first season of the show, however, were less than stellar, with a splatted tomato critic score of 46% and a viewer score of 54%. 

Before news of the show’s cancellation broke, showrunner André Nemec shared his hopes for what a potential second season would include. “We definitely know where we want to go, and I’m excited that we get to tell those stories," he said during the show’s red carpet premiere. "Fingers crossed that we get more Cowboy Bebop.”

Apparently not enough fingers were crossed, and the live-action series has come to an end, at least on Netflix. The silver lining for fans is that Season 1 is still with us on Netflix as well as all 26 episodes of the original anime series.