Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop arrived with a great deal of fanfare and no lack of fan support, but it apparently wasn’t enough to get the show a second season, as the streaming service has already made the decision to cancel the show. However, while it might be gone, it is certainly not forgotten, as fans are still making posts of support for the show to the point that co-star Mustafa Shakir is in shock.
The man who played Jet Black in the Netflix series took to Instagram to thank the fans for the outpouring of love and support he has received since the word of the show’s cancellation came down. Everybody, Shakir included, may be frustrated the show is gone, but he is happy to see what the show meant to so many. Shakir says…
Tbh the love has been overflowing about CB. I’m flabbergasted and really grateful. There are a few ways this could’ve gone..so I am elated to have your appreciation right now.
There may not have been enough support for Cowboy Bebop to keep the show alive, but there was still a lot of it, and Mustafa Shakir has been hearing a lot of it in the days since Netflix officially gave the show the ax.
Part of the frustration from fans is that the live-action show only covered about half of the original anime series, and it ended with a pretty major twist that was likely to set the second season in a very different direction. We’ll now never get to see just what was planned for the future of the series. There was at least one more season worth of story to tell, and possibly more, since future twists could have kept this version going longer than the original anime ever did. Although, Mustafa Shakir did joke in his post that he was giving fans a look at Jet’s planned Season 2 look, and honestly, we missed out.
To be clear, he says he’s only kidding here, so please don’t believe this is what Jet would have looked like in Cowboy Bebop Season 2. They wouldn’t have created those costumes since they knew a second season was not guaranteed. This is Netflix after all and cancellation comes with the territory.
Netflix is a black box when it comes to viewing numbers. We only know numbers for sure when Netflix releases them, and it only does that when it has something to celebrate. Whether Cowboy Bebop was anything close to what Netflix needs to renew a show, or what that even is, we really don’t know. And while Netflix has occasionally been the place where cancelled shows have been saved, we rarely see the opposite happen.
