In the year 2071, fifty years after a hyperspace gateway accident rendered Earth nearly uninhabitable, humanity has spread across the solar system, colonizing the rocky planets and moons. With the rise in interplanetary crime, the Inter Solar System Police have authorized a legalized contract system, allowing registered bounty hunters known as cowboys to chase down criminals for the right price. The live-action adaptation follows the crew of the spaceship Bebop, a converted fishing trawler that serves as home to a ragtag group of bounty hunters all trying, with limited success, to outrun their pasts.

The central trio is led by Spike Spiegel, a lanky, martial arts-trained bounty hunter with a history of violent gang activity. Born on Mars, Spike is an exiled former hitman of the criminal Red Dragon Syndicate, and his cool, cavalier attitude masks a man haunted by a life he left behind. His partner is Jet Black, a former ISSP officer known as the Black Dog for his tenacity. Jet, who sports a cybernetic arm after a mission gone wrong, acts as the Bebops pragmatic captain, maintaining the ships bonsai trees and acting as a father figure to a crew that constantly tests his patience. They are reluctantly joined by Faye Valentine, a sultry and snarky con artist who woke up from a 54-year stint in suspended animation to find herself burdened by amnesia and massive gambling debts.

While the crew chases a variety of lowlifes across the solar system in search of their next meal ticket, the central narrative arc revolves around Spikes unavoidable collision with his former life. Before joining the Bebop, Spike was a rising star in the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate, where he was known as Fearless and was best friends with a ruthless gangster named Vicious. Their brotherhood shattered when Spike began an affair with Julia, Viciouss beautiful and mysterious girlfriend. When the Syndicates elders ordered Spike to kill the increasingly unhinged Vicious, Spike instead chose to flee with Julia. The escape attempt failed; Spike was shot and left for dead, and Julia vanished, leaving Spike to assume she was either dead or lost forever.

Throughout the first season, Vicious executes a violent coup, slaughtering the Syndicates elders to seize power, while simultaneously hunting the ghost of his former friend. When the past finally catches up, Jet discovers the truth about Spikes criminal origins, leading to a confrontation in a cathedral where Vicious attempts to execute both of them. In a significant deviation from the original anime, the live-action series empowers Julia as an active agent rather than a passive memory. Having escaped Viciouss captivity on her own terms, Julia arrives at the final confrontation. Instead of rescuing Spike to run away with him, she shoots Vicious and then, feeling abandoned by Spike, shoots him as well, sending him falling from a window. She declares Spike nothing more than a dream she needed to wake up from and assumes control of the Syndicate, keeping the defeated Vicious as her prisoner.

In the aftermath, the Bebop crew scatters. Jet, heartbroken over losing his daughter to another family, warns Spike never to return. Faye leaves to search for the remnants of her forgotten past. Bleeding out in an alleyway, Spike is discovered by a strange, orange-haired girl who calls herself Radical Edward, a prodigious hacker accompanied by Ein, a genetically engineered corgi with human-like intelligence. The season concludes with Ed urging the unconscious Spike to get up for one more adventure, setting the stage for a potential reunion of the crew.