Everyone's Stuck in the Past in Cowboy Bebop

Note: the following article contains spoilers.

"I'm just watching a bad dream I never wake up from."

Cowboy Bebop burst onto the anime scene in 1998, originally coming from a concept simply designed to sell toys. When director Shinichiro Watanabe was given complete creative freedom of the project, though, it turned into something far more meaningful for creator and audience alike.

The series is structured episodically, with the main overarching plot being the rivalry between main character Spike Spiegel and his former Syndicate partner, Vicious. Spike's past is revealed slowly over the course of the show, culminating in the two-part episode Jupiter Jazz that marks the midway point in the series. The show ends with another two-parter, The Real Folk Blues, which is named after its ending credits theme.

Spike cruises all of space, searching for criminals that can bring in a bounty worth either one meal or enough to last you the rest of your life. With him are Jet (an ex-cop who owns the ship the group travels on), the indomitable, memory-lacking Faye Valentine, and the endlessly eccentric Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV- or just "Ed" for short. Every character gets their spot in the limelight, however tragic, upsetting, or humorous the episode may be. But what connects every personality together is not a sense of complementary interests or necessity; rather, all four of the Bebop crew are hopelessly connected to their pasts, all of which seemed to freeze in time three years prior.

Jet, the most straight-faced of the group, retired from the police force three years ago after sustaining a bullet to the arm: one that ultimately resulted in an amputation. Jet is the only Bebop member that faces his past in a rational, non-violent way; he stumbles across pieces of the life he used to live by sheer chance. An object referenced many times in episode 10, Ganymede Elegy, is a stopped pocket watch Jet has held onto since an old girlfriend walked out under mysterious circumstances a few years ago. As she's on the lam with her new partner, a man wanted for a recent murder, he has no choice but to face forward and reconcile (quite literally) with stopped time. The episode ends with Jet tossing the watch in a lake, finally able to move on from a period he never let go of until now.

Faye Valentine is the prime example of a femme fatale. Unbound by her various debts, she mainly spends any sums she gets from bounties flushing it down the drain of a casino, and then returning to the Bebop broke and without an ounce of guilt. But underneath the exterior, what remains?

Explored in the episodes My Funny Valentine, Speak Like a Child, and Hard Luck Woman, Faye's past is arguably the most tragic of all the crew members'. Rendered harmed beyond the capabilities of medicine at the time, Faye was put into cryogenic sleep after a devastating Gateway accident. Tens of years later, she was woken up, but had no memory of her previous life and then inherited massive amounts of debt after falling for a scheming insurance collector. In Speak Like a Child, an unmarked package containing a Betamax tape is delivered to the ship, and then a player that fits the model of said tape. The contents of the videotape are a series of home recordings featuring a young Faye, whose sunny demeanor is far different from her current self. While watching a cheer where she encourages to her future self to, "Don't lose me!" Jet and Spike are speechless, while Faye watches on silently, crying.

Unlike Jet, Ed, or even Spike, Faye never has a conclusive ending to her character. Her actions after the final credits roll remain ambiguous, and she could have either stayed on the ship or ran off gambling for the rest of her life. Faye never has a chance to reconcile with her past: all of the memories return, but what remains is destroyed, reduced to rubble. There is no happy ending for her, but was one even possible in the first place?

Edward acts like a kind of "mirror" to Faye in this regard: while the latter remembers her past but can do nothing with these newfound memories, Ed actually has a chance to chase what she's lost. While chasing a bounty, the crew inadvertently find Ed's estranged father, whom the 13-year-old hadn't seen for years. The neglectful (but soft-hearted) fellow quickly runs off, accidentally leaving Ed behind in a haste to race in search of a new adventure. Anyone watching the show, as well as the adult members of the Bebop group, realize he has little authority as a parent: he hasn’t seen his child for who knows how long, and doesn’t even know Edward’s gender (although you can’t really blame him for that last part). Ed may realize this herself, but in the end, it doesn't particularly matter. She walks away from the ship, leaving behind the dejected Spike and Jet, but not before giving the former a pinwheel from the orphanage she left three years ago. Many viewers have pointed out traits of the pinwheel: it's bright, colorful, and constantly changing direction, just like the girl who left in search of something new.

Spike's story has already ended by the time we meet him. Through a careful usage of flashbacks and dialogue, his background is revealed: he's fallen into a tryst with his partner Vicious' girlfriend, Julia. Their relationship remains secret for a little while, but before long Vicious discovers the truth. This culminates in an off-screen bloodbath, where Spike is forced to flee from the Syndicate and leave Julia behind. Three years later, Spike is a part of the Bebop crew. Vicious has now fully taken over the Syndicate and simply waits for Spike to come, as he feels it's in his blood to return.

The decision not to fully lay out Spike's past is a careful one. We as viewers expect to be spoon-fed this information, but Cowboy Bebop avoids our expectations and lets us figure out what really happened for ourselves.

The two-part finale is devoted entirely to Spike, allowing him to find closure in his past. With Ed now gone, plus Faye and Jet's threads being resolved, Spike is the only one running from the inevitable; Watanabe forces him to face Julia and Vicious head-on.

For a bit in The Real Folk Blues, the viewer hopes that Spike can reunite with Julia and run away with her; amidst the carnage, they even share a few nostalgic moments. However, as Julia's emotional death shows, the fate for these two were sealed from the moment they betrayed Vicious. With his lover dead and only one way left to go, Spike moves forward and kills all of Vicious' men; the climactic battle takes place in a demolished building with the dark sky in full view. The fight itself is rather brief, only lasting roughly two minutes before Spike lands the finishing shot (not before the two trade for each others' weapons in a form of mutual respect). The scene being short isn't an accident, as most of the emotional payoff should have come from other episodes. Instead of glorifying the moment, Cowboy Bebop respects the viewer enough to handle Vicious' death on their own.

Director Shinichiro Watanabe himself has said he's not entirely sure whether Spike lives or dies. Before panning into the brilliant blue sky, and eventually a falling star in space, the frame focuses on our hero slowly walking down a set of stairs- much to the dismay of Syndicate members expecting Vicious to be victorious. Spike raises his arm and makes the symbol of a gun towards the camera and just before collapsing says one single word: "Bang."