Cowboy Bebop Star John Cho

If you’re like us then you’re still feeling a little bitter over Netflix’s live-action adventures of John Cho‘s Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir‘s Jet Black, and Daniella Pineda‘s Faye Valentine getting killed off prematurely. But that’s what happened back in December 2021, as the news broke that the trio had collected their final bounty. Two months later during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to promote his new Little, Brown Books for Young Readers book Troublemaker, Cho addressed how he felt when he first heard the news that Cowboy Bebop would not be returning for a second season and how much it meant to receive the reaction from the fans that he did.

“I put a lot of my life into it. I’d gotten injured shooting that show and so I took a year off because of the surgery and devoted myself to rehab, came back, and finished the show. It was this huge mountain for me to climb, healing from that injury. I felt good about myself as a result. We also shot the show in New Zealand, so my family moved there. It was just a huge event in my life and it was suddenly over. It was very shocking and I was bummed,” Cho revealed. “But I was very warmed by the response. I wish I could have contacted everybody and gotten hugs. You can’t do that now, but … I don’t know what this is. I’m mystified a little bit about how you can connect with people that you don’t know doing your work, but I won’t question it. I will value it and treasure it. I’m just really deeply appreciative that anyone would care. It’s stunning to me.”

The series was a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios (a partnership between Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios), with André Nemec and Jeff Pinkner of Midnight Radio serving as showrunners and executive-producing. Christopher Yost (Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok) wrote the first episode and executive produced. In addition, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio (Limetown, High Fidelity, Knightfall); Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios (Snowpiercer, Hanna); Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki of Sunrise Inc; Tim Coddington, Tetsu Fujimura, Michael Katleman, and Matthew Weinberg also executive-produced. Original anime director Shinichiro Watanabe served as a consultant. The writing team included Nemec, Yost, Vivian Lee (Lost in Space), Liz Sagal (Sons of Anarchy), Karl Taro Greenfeld (Ray Donovan), Alexandra E Hartman, Sean Cummings (Everything Sucks!), Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost), and Jennifer Johnson (Designated Survivor). As for directors, the ten episodes were split between directors Alex Garcia Lopez (Daredevil) and Michael Katleman (Zoo).