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Irreverence and Intrigue in a New Jazzed-Out ‘Cowboy Bebop’ Clip

Matthew Denis
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From left to right, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, John Cho as Spike Spiegel, and Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine in Netflix's 'Cowboy Bebop.'
From left to right, Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, John Cho as Spike Spiegel, and Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine in Netflix’s ‘Cowboy Bebop.’ Image used with permission by copyright holder

Get ready for vintage action: Cowboy Bebop is coming, complete with a 1970s “ba, dat, ba, daaah,” jazzed out soundtrack. 

After months of news, photos, and theme songs, Netflix has released the first teaser for its live-action Cowboy Bebop series — kind of. Titled “The Lost Session,” it shows off John Cho as Spike Spiegal, Danielle Pineda as Faye Valentine, and Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, as they take on a bounty that won’t be part of the actual Netflix show.

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The trailer, directed by Greg Jardin (who also directs the live action show), is actually a standalone episode, “The Lost Session,” even if it’s only two minutes and forty seconds long. 

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The action begins aboard the Bebop spaceship with Jet, Faye, and Spike getting the call for a new bounty. After a fight with the wrong crew (complete with a Spike roundhouse flip kick), Spike stops in the middle of the action to eat, a first declaration of his go-to mantra, “Noodles first.” 

This scene leads to the first hint at what will go down during the actual Netflix show action. The music slows and the screen smokes to reveal a silhouette of Spike’s true nemesis, Vicious (Alex Hassell), his katana-wielding former partner turned Red Dragon Crime Syndicate gangster. 

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After the gang finally finds and fights the correct crew, the action plays out with a playful split screen before Spike and Jet Black inevitably mess up the bounty and lose out on the cash. 

“Hey nutbuckets!” Faye informs her overeager partners. “There’s no payout if you shoot him in the face.”

While the first live-action adaptation of Shinichirō Watanabe’s seminal show is a blast, the show’s iconic blowing horns and sax carry it. Cowboy Bebop showrunner André Nemec insisted that there was no show without the original noir anime series’ composer, Yoko Kanno. However the show eventually goes, the promise of a new Kanno soundtrack is payoff in itself.

“Anybody who loves the music from Cowboy Bebop is going to love beyond what Yoko has done for us on this show,” Nemec told Polygon magazine in August. “When I get those pieces there have been more times than I can remember that I hear something and … a smile comes to my face.”

While it’s nice to get a short preview of Cowboy Bebop, audiences will have to wait for next week’s trailer for actual Bebop series footage. The show is set to stream on Netflix beginning Friday, Nov. 19. 

Read More: Netflix’s First Look at Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

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Matthew Denis
Matthew Denis
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Matt Denis is an on-the-go remote multimedia reporter, exploring arts, culture, and the existential in the Pacific Northwest…
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