Cowboy Bebop Anime Ending Explained — What Happened To Spike?

Cowboy Bebop anime spoilers follow, and maybe some for Netflix's live-action show too.

"You're gonna carry that weight." It's been 22 years since the original Cowboy Bebop ended with this now infamous line, and thanks to the ambiguity of the show's final shot, anime fans continue to carry the weight of it with them, even now.

Did Spike survive to lift himself up and let go of his pain? Or was his fire extinguished like the star that fades out right above him in the night sky?

For a show about misfit drifters who physically drift through space, Shinichirō Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop is very much concerned with weight, specifically the weight of the past, and how it bears down on the four main characters. But by the end, each of our favourite bounty hunters finds a way to either push past this or eventually succumb to their individual trauma, consumed by the weight of what's come before.

With the show's arrival on Netflix, not to mention the new live-action adaptation, now's the perfect time to head back and take a closer look at what became of these legendary space cowboys at the end of Cowboy Bebop.

Cowboy Bebop ending explained

To understand Spike's future or lack thereof, you must first understand his past. At first, though, his backstory isn't apparent. The Spike we meet in episode one seems easy-going, the very definition of carefree. But as the story develops, we gradually learn that Spike is nursing a broken heart, one that has left him melancholic almost to the point of nihilism.

Before he became a bounty hunter, Spike worked for the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate alongside a man named Vicious. During their time together, Spike fell in love with his partner's girlfriend, Julia, and the two had an affair. When they wanted to run away together, Vicious told Julia that she would have to kill Spike or he'd kill them both. But of course, she was unable to do that, so instead, Julia went into hiding.

From that point on, Spike seems to exist in a liminal state between life and death, between consciousness and unconsciousness. But across 26 episodes, everyone's favourite Space Cowboy eventually starts to develop real connections with his fellow bounty hunters aboard Bebop. Jet, Faye, Ed, and even Ein create a chosen family together, one that has the potential to bring Spike back from the brink of emptiness.

But then Vicious tries to overthrow the Syndicate's leadership in part one of 'The Real Folk Blues', and suddenly, everything starts to spiral once again for Spike. That is, until a chance encounter with Faye reunites Spike with Julia, his lost love.

At that point, it really does look like the pair might find a way to stop Vicious and finally be free to live out the rest of their lives in peace, perhaps aboard the Bebop with the rest of Spike's new "family".

But hope is fleeting, and soon after they're reunited, Julia dies in a shootout with the Syndicate. "It's all a dream," says Julia as she falls slowly to the ground, almost as if she's floating, weightless. Just like Spike, she too has struggled to connect with the waking world since they were separated from one another.

And with that, Spike is untethered completely. Reality is utterly meaningless without Julia, and life might as well be a dream. This cruel twist of fate sticks the knife in further for people watching back home when Spike realises that the only way out is a fight to the death with Vicious, one where his own survival no longer matters.

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Bereft, Spike feels more alone than he ever thought possible, and that's why his goodbye talks with Jet and Faye hurt so much. Because it's so obvious to us that he isn't alone at all, that these connections really do matter.

In his own way, Jet tried to dissuade Spike from this whole debacle by telling his version of Ernest Hemingway’s "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", a story that ends with the protagonist considering his own mortality. "I hate stories like that," says Jet at the end. "Men only think about the past right before their death. As if they were searching frantically for proof that they were alive."

But for Spike, Julia was the missing piece, the one thing that did keep him alive. So later on, after Julia's death, Spike tells Jet a story of his own, one about a seemingly immortal tiger-striped cat who died one last time when his love perished of old age. "I hate that story," Spike says at the end. "I hate cats, you know that."

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Not only was this a joke of sorts, but for Spike, the story also seems to confirm his own resignation to death. And while Jet, who's a bit emotionally stunted himself, fails to acknowledge this outright, Faye is more direct, accusing Spike of being stuck in the past.

It's a fair point, and Faye herself knows exactly how painful that can be. But crucially, Faye also knows how liberating it can be to let go of that pain, something which she herself only discovered just recently when her amnesiac storyline came to an end of sorts in 'Hard Luck Woman'.

Before Spike and Faye part ways for the last time, Spike opens up about the truth behind his eyes, bringing them closer than they've ever been before. And that's why Faye is so devastated by his departure, knowing full well that he won't be returning alive.

"I’m not going there to die. I’m going to find out if I’m really alive," says Spike, but they both know that's not true, so all Faye can do now is shoot her guns in the air and watch him walk away.

Everything that's happened on Cowboy Bebop leads up to this, a final confrontation with Vicious, but in the run-up to this deadly reunion, Spike sustains multiple injuries fighting off Syndicate lackeys. Still, Spike manages to hold his own against Vicious long enough to shoot him in the chest just as his old friend slices Spike across the abdomen with his sword.

At this point, the camera takes us into Spike's right eye where we see a reflection of Julia. This was all for her, and now that vengeance has been claimed, Spike is finally ready to let go of the past in the most literal way possible — by surrendering to the release of unconsciousness, and perhaps even death. Because without Julia, life is just a "bad dream", one that Spike can never hope to wake from.

Is Spike really dead?

As the show's final scene comes to an end, we see a star go out in the sky above Spike. This hearkens back to an earlier moment in the episode where Laughing Bull explains that each person's own personal star will fade when their life comes to an end. Then the line "You're gonna carry that weight" appears on screen as the credits roll in for the last time.

This star motif certainly suggests that Spike has died, or is at least about to die. When his body hits the floor, white doves also appear in a way that mirrored those we saw when Julia was killed. So even if Spike does somehow manage to survive all those extensive wounds, it's safe to assume that he's now dead on the inside at the very least.

Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichirō Watanabe always planned to end the show with this confrontation. "Even before I made the first episode, I already had the ending in mind," he told The Daily Texan in 2006. "Even though I had the ending in mind by myself, I was opposed by my staff. They were upset because they were saying that we wouldn't be able to make a continuation."

When asked if Spike survived, Watanabe had this to say: "I've never officially said that he's died. At this point, I can tell you that I'm not sure if he's alive or dead. I think probably rather than being yelled at for killing Spike, I think ... people are more upset that I might make a continuation."

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In 2017, Watanabe addressed this again when he told IGN that "Spike could be sleeping". But if our space cowboy is really dead, Watanabe doesn't think that Faye and Jet would have consoled each other for long on Bebop.

"I guess you could say I don't think they'd get along very well," which is pretty heartbreaking when you think about it, because that means Jet would have been left alone in his grief, assuming of course that Spike did indeed die.

So there is no real answer here, and perhaps that's for the best. Spike has always existed somewhere between life and death, sleep and wakefulness, so it's rather fitting that his end should remain just as ambiguous.

That way, fans can decide for themselves what really happened in those final moments, and by doing so, there's a chance for us to let go of that weight and find some catharsis too.

Cowboy Bebop is now available to watch in full on Netflix. Season one of Netflix's live-action version will arrive in full on November 19, 2021.

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Read MoreDavid Opie

After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.

In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.

David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.

Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.

As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.

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