Netflix Cancels Popular Series After Just 1 Season

In a shocking turn of events, Netflix has canceled the long-awaited live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop after just one season. Starring John Cho, Cowboy Bebop is an adaptation of a popular anime series, and what made the original so beloved just didn’t translate to the Netflix original. The Hollywood Reporter revealed that while the 10-episode season earned 74 million viewing hours worldwide since its debut on Nov. 19 and made it to the top of the Netflix Top 10 chart, it dropped nearly 59% in viewership the following week. 

 Cho stars as Spike Spiegel, the bounty hunting “cowboy” that teams with Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) on the Bebop. Over the course of the series, they pick up Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) and Radical Edward (Eden Perkins), plus a corgi that is more important than it seems. While the original anime is considered a classic, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is just the latest in a string of live-action adaptations like Ghost in the Shell and Netflix’s movie Death Note that make a case for leaving these stories in the animated realm.

Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop proved to be very divisive amongst fans and received middling reviews from critics. The series didn’t receive horrible reviews, but it wasn’t dazzling anybody. The original series appeared on the streamer simultaneously, which only lead to unflattering comparisons.

As BGR notes, some of the response pegged the adaptation as a prime example of “Netflix bloat” that looks “worse than CW quality.” It was also one of the few entries on Rotten Tomatoes that has critics and fans in agreement with 50 percent and 53 percent scores, respectively. The outlet quoted The Daily Beast review of the Netflix offering in the end.

“Unfortunately, the show’s only connection (to the source material) is aesthetic. It looks like the world and even sometimes – when the energy is high, bullets are flying, or new characters are introduced – can feel like it too,” the review reads. “But as a whole, the new Cowboy Bebop is just so ploddingly inefficient and misguided, the idea that it could share the same DNA as its original is farcical. When it comes to stakes, the original is simply in another weight class.”