A Cowboy Bebop crew member just revealed that the canceled Netflix series already had completed scripts for the unmade season 2. The show, which premiered on the streaming service on November 19, 2021, was a live-action remake of the seminal anime series of the same name. The original Cowboy Bebop ran for 26 episodes in 1998 and though its run was short, it was massively influential and is largely credited for helping popularize Japanese animation in the West.
Netflix's live-action adaptation starred John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, and Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, three spacefaring bounty hunters in the year 2071. The show was controversial, especially for hardcore fans of the original anime who didn't appreciate it being altered, though it was also poorly received by critics, who gave it a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. After just 3 weeks, Netflix unceremoniously canceled Cowboy Bebop.
Naomi Markman, the script coordinator for Cowboy Bebop season 1, shared a Tweet regarding the show's cancellation. "Not to rub it in your faces," she said, but "f**k you're missing out." Not only is the tweet a sad reminder that the show will no longer have time to grow and find its own path, it reveals that the scripts for season 2 were already complete - or at least in a mostly finished form. Check out the Tweet - which does contain NSFW language - below:
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The Netflix series only had the opportunity to adapt about half of the original Cowboy Bebop anime. Though the cliffhanger at the end of season 1 implied that they were preparing to adapt portions of the 2001 Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, it would likely have been mixed in with the storylines of the second half of the original series. The show had already diverged quite a bit from the source material, so it was likely that season 3 would have gone on to tell a completely original story.
The revelation that the Cowboy Bebop season 2 scripts had already been written provides a curious insight into Netflix's development process on the show. There are several potential reasons this could have been the case. First, it's possible that they had the writing team adapt the entirety of the anime, with the intention of splitting it into two - or even three seasons - based on the scripts that were already completed as a holistic unit ahead of time. Second, it might show that the streamer originally had so much confidence in the series that they were already moving ahead on the next season before the reactions to the first one had time to roll in. Ultimately, it's unclear what happened with Cowboy Bebop and it seems likely that Netflix won't elaborate.
Source: Naomi Markman