Cowboy Bebop seems to have been mentioned everywhere in the last few weeks as the live-action series from The Mandalorian’s Christopher Yost and Andre Nemec made its debut on Netflix in November after being in development for four years. Now it turns out that the long wait for the anime adaptation may not have been worth it. Netflix have officially cancelled the series less than a month after the 10 episodes dropped on the platform. While the show has its fans, they are clearly not enough to warrant a second season of the tale of a group of bounty hunters travelling space on a starship hunting targets and facing demons from their past.

As reported in The Hollywood Reporter, it has been suggested that the series brought in 74 million viewing hours across its ten episodes in the three weeks since it premiered on November 19th. However, it appears that the week beginning November 29th saw a massive 59% drop-off in viewership, which has been pinpointed by insiders as one of the main reasons for the cancellation, along with a whole host of negative reviews and the cost of the series compared to the returns it is going to end up bringing in. As far as Netflix are concerned, it is no Squid Game and if it doesn’t bring home the bacon, then second chances seem to be out of the question.

On debuting, Cowboy Bebop didn’t seem to get much love from critics, with reviews peaking at mediocre at best and audience opinions being just as mixed. The cast and special effects came in for praise but on the whole, the tone and translation from the original anime is what seemed to be the divisive issue on all fronts. While there have been many other series that have managed to survive first season jitters, but again it seems that with a hefty budget, the series is heading the same way as the likes of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which had a similar niche groups of avid fans but wasn’t profitable enough to be given a second run out.

For those who have watched and enjoyed the series, the news will be a big blow considering the series put a lot of effort in building a solid foundation for more seasons to come, including ending the first season on a cliffhanger after holding back the fan-favorite character Radical Ed and with both Nemec and Yost having discussed how a second season was already being planned before the episodes made their debut, it seems that all of those plans were very much a case of putting the cart before the horse and were perhaps a bit premature.

While we have seen a number of series being saved from the axe by a change of platform, the bad news for anyone hoping that this could happen with Cowboy Bebop is that recently it has been Netflix doing a lot of the saving, with the most notable to those rescued shows being Manifest. While we may see a bit of noise on social media, it seems fairly safe to say that this is not going to be a Release The Snyder Cut moment. If you want to check out Cowboy Bebop for yourself, the whole series is available on Netflix now.