(Credit: Netflix)

Netflix has no issues cancelling original shows that don’t live up to expectations, but even by the streaming service’s standards, Cowboy Bebop came and went before most subscribers even had a chance to blink.

The live-action anime adaptation had spent years lodged in the darkest recesses of development hell, with Netflix finally dragging it out and sending it towards the screen. There was an air of trepidation after what happened to Death Note, though, but the response from fans of the source material was largely that of enthusiasm and excitement.

Cowboy Bebop assembled its cast and cameras began rolling in July 2019, only for disaster to strike when leading man John Cho suffered a torn ACL two months into shooting. The injury was so severe production was shut down for eight months so that he could recover, stretching the schedule out to March 2021.

As the actor explained to Vulture, he was wracked with guilt over the accident. “I felt very guilty that I had let the production down, and my cast and the crew in New Zealand had had a job, and then they didn’t the next day,” he said. “And I didn’t feel that I could come back and half-ass this role. I had to take it deadly seriously. It was people’s livelihoods and I wanted every single person on the set to know that I was doing my best every single day.”

Not only did Cho return with extra vigour and commitment to atone for his self-perceived sins, but he felt responsible for “that upheaval in a whole crew’s lives” despite the pandemic also playing a massive part, making him more determined than ever to give Cowboy Bebop his best. During the sabbatical, the writing team used it as an opportunity to reframe and restructure the season, so it wasn’t as if everyone was sitting around twiddling their thumbs and waiting for his return.

By the time Cowboy Bebop finally premiered in November 2021, the hype was at fever pitch. Unfortunately, existing fans and newcomers weren’t exactly thrilled with what they got. It wasn’t unfaithful to the source material to an egregious level, but it still didn’t do it enough justice for those very familiar with the anime. Even worse, audiences seemed highly uninterested in finding out what it was all about.

Coming under heavy criticism from its own fandom – which even extended to anime director Shinichirō Watanabe – Cowboy Bebop needed to draw in huge viewership figures to justify the second season heavily teased by the first’s cliffhanger ending. Instead, it was completely hung out to dry.

Cowboy Bebop spent a measly three weeks in Netflix’s global top ten, and a mere 20 days after it launched to much fanfare, it was cancelled. It may have been a logistical nightmare, but there’s no world in which Cho’s injury was responsible for the show’s rapid demise. It wasn’t very good, and even the people who were supposed to like it didn’t like it very much, making it a doomed enterprise from day one.