After being spoken about for years, a live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop is almost here, premiering on Netflix on November 19, 2021. And despite showing off the cast of heroes led by John Cho’s Spike Spiegel, fans have wondered where the fourth member, Ed, might be.
In a new interview showrunner and Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol screenwriter André Nemec tells Polygon that fans looking forward to Ed shouldn’t worry.
“Ed — everybody wants to know about Ed!” Nemec says. “People will be… very delighted when they watch the season.”
The people behind Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop have said previously that the hacker known as Ed (full name Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV) will be in the series. But with the main cast revealed there’s still no Ed anywhere to be seen, nor any news about casting.
Still, Nemec seems pretty confident that fans looking forward to Ed will be pleased with the live-action Netflix series, which is as strong a confirmation as we’ll likely get before the series premieres in November.
The full interview is worth a read for anyone curious about the direction of the live-action series. According to Nemec, the live-action series is not going to “ape the anime” but “live in the spirit” of the series. “There are obviously things that we cannot achieve with real people that an anime can,” Nemec says. Instead, the series will “build out the continuing stories of Spike Spiegel and Jet Black and Faye Valentine.”
One area from the anime that was vital for the team to bring back was the music of anime composer Yoko Kanno, who will be composing the original soundtrack for Netflix’s show. According to Nemec, Kanno has “completely reimagined” the music for the series, and old favorites from the anime will return in the Netflix show but in new ways.
Cowboy Bebop is shaping up to be a different kind of anime adaptation than the ones we have seen from Netflix so far. John Cho also recently spoke about taking on the role of Spike, including acknowledging the questions some might have about his age.
We’ll have to wait until November to see if Nemec and his team — which includes writers from Thor: Ragnarok, Sons of Anarchy, and Lost — will stick the landing.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.