Ahead of the premiere for Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop the question on everyone’s minds was, “Where’s Ed?” Well IGN has the answer, as well as a comment from showrunner André Nemec on why the show’s creators chose to handle the character the way they did.
Check below the gallery for the full story because of spoilers.
[SPOILER WARNING. Don’t read if you haven’t watched Cowboy Bebop yet]
During the lead-up to the Cowboy Bebop premiere, Nemec and the cast kept mum on the whereabouts of Ed, only telling fans they’ll “be delighted.”
Well, at the end of the first season of Cowboy Bebop, the crew is scattered in the winds and an injured Spike lies down on the street by himself, wounded. Only it’s Ed who shows up with a bounty request for the cowboy.
It’s definitely Ed, with the same outfit and mannerisms as from the anime. Nemec says the decision to keep Ed from appearing on the show until the very last minute, setting up a possible second season, was deliberate.
“We really take our time to get to know our characters. And Ed is a very complicated character in all of the good and right ways,” Nemec explained to IGN. “And I wanted to make sure that, fingers crossed, we get to a season 2 that we really have the appropriate amount of time to explore the character of Ed.”
Nemec says that the first season was dedicated to exploring the core trio of Spike, Jet, and Faye. And that a full season was necessary to ensure audiences fully understood this main trio. Then, and only then, did Nemec feel it was appropriate to add Ed.
“Ed is a proper disrupter and really gets the guys into some real sh*t every now and again. So I think to really properly tell the story of Ed the real estate was necessary to know who our characters were before disrupting their world with Ed.”
Some fans worried Ed might be too difficult to adapt for live-action, but as we said in our review, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop live-action series fully embraces the original anime and attempts to bring everything about it to life, for better or worse. Check out the full review for more on our thoughts on the anime adaptation.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.