Is Ed In Netflix's Cowboy Bebop? Why Live-Action Trailers Are Hiding Them
Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop trailers have looked great so far, but they’ve lacked one major character from the original anime – Ed. Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, and even Ein the corgi have all been shown extensively, but so far, the final member of the Bebop crew is nowhere to be found. That could mean that the new Cowboy Bebop’s Ed will be notably different from the anime character, or it could indicate that Ed is being saved for a season 2.
In the original Cowboy Bebop, Ed is a 13-year-old computer hacking prodigy who Spike and co. join up with on a visit to Earth. A particularly androgynous character, Ed was first envisioned as a boy but was reimagined as a teenage girl in order to keep a better gender balance aboard the Bebop. Out of all the Cowboy Bebop characters, Ed is the quirkiest, constantly referring to herself in the third person and moving through all manner of dangerous situations with an almost oblivious childlike whimsy.
All those wacky traits have made Ed one of the show’s most popular characters, so her noted absence from Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop trailers has been met with disappointment and trepidation from fans. The most obvious explanation for Ed’s absence is that she simply isn’t in the show’s first season. Ed is the last character to join the Bebop crew in the anime, and since the new show is only ten episodes long, it’s likely that a Cowboy Bebop season 2 is already being planned. Some of the storylines shown in the Cowboy Bebop trailers are from later episodes of the anime, but it's likely that the sequence of some events has simply been changed around. With that in mind, it could make sense for Cowboy Bebop season 1 to take place entirely before the introduction of Ed, with her being saved for a final-episode cameo or a season 2 debut.
It’s also possible that Ed will be in the live-action Cowboy Bebop on Netflix, but that the character is being hidden in the trailers because she’s being significantly changed. Some fans have expressed concern that a child actor wouldn’t be able to bring Ed’s wild and zany persona to life in a compelling way, leading to a theory that the character could be getting turned into some kind of AI. The Cowboy Bebop trailers haven't confirmed that in any way, but it would keep Ed’s computer hacking role on the Bebop the same. However, it would also be a major shift from the high-energy silliness of the anime character.
Another theory is that the new Cowboy Bebop’s Ed will be either openly nonbinary or genderfluid – something original series director Shinichirō Watanabe has alluded to in the past. In interviews, Watanabe has said that Ed doesn’t need a definite gender and that while the character uses she/her pronouns in the original show, Ed’s androgynous character identity shouldn’t be explicitly tied to that label. Making Ed officially nonbinary in Netflix’s live-action remake would make sense, but it wouldn’t inherently explain why the character has yet to be shown in the Cowboy Bebop trailers, or why no casting announcement has been made. In all likelihood, fans will have to wait for Cowboy Bebop season 2 to get a full look at the new Radical Edward.