Warning! Spoilers Ahead For Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop
Faye Valentine is an integral part of the original Cowboy Bebop series, and her backstory factors into her behavioral patterns to a certain extent throughout the course of the anime. Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop attempts to re-invent Faye’s character in conjunction with modern times, delving deeper into how her relationship with the past, which shapes her arc with the rest of the Bebop crew. Played by Daniella Pineda, Faye in Netflix’s live-action emerges as a go-it-alone bounty hunter who gradually develops a found family dynamic with Spike (John Cho) and Jet (Mustafa Shakir), which can be deemed equal parts complex and endearing.
The classic appeal of Shinichirō Watanabe’s original can arguably be found in the aura of transcience evoked by the short episodes of the anime, which primarily focused on the crew’s adventures while occasionally filling in the gaps about their respective pasts. The same goes for Faye, who seemed to be running away from her past, unable to pay off the massive debts incurred by cryogenic procedures and navigate her sense of self due to her lost identity. While the live-action follows a similar backstory, key elements about Faye’s past have been altered, propelling a reinvention of the character in interesting ways.
As opposed to the original anime, next to nothing is revealed about Faye’s real parents as of yet, as she is still on the path to discovering who she really is. In season 1, episode 4, “Callisto Soul,” Faye embarks upon a mission to retrieve her Identikit, which was never given to her after she was defrosted from her cryosleep. As Faye spent a considerably long amount of time in cryo, she suffered amnesia, which essentially erased all of her memories. As the defrosting process was signed off by a man named Mark Manley, which is a gender-flipped version of the anime’s nurse Manley, Faye threatens him at gunpoint to arrange a rendezvous with the mastermind behind the fiasco — Whitney Haggis Matsumoto.
In the anime, Whitney Haggis Matsumoto was a con man who pretended to be Faye’s lawyer in an attempt to swindle her, who later acted like he was romantically interested in her in order to gain her trust. However, in an act of tremendous betrayal, Matsumoto not only disappeared after faking his death but also left Faye 35 million woolongs in debt. This had a huge effect on Faye’s personality in the anime, as she is seen naturally untrusting of those she encounters, which is a natural response, owing to her past trauma. In the live-action, Matsumoto is a con-woman who masqueraded as Faye’s mother after she came to, in an attempt to rob her of the medical settlement money. Moreover, Matsumoto never gave Faye her Identikit, leaving her only with the fabricated “Valentine” name and an ID, X1-2345SSY.
In Cowboy Bebop season 1, episode 7, “Galileo Hustle,” Faye and Matsumoto cross paths, and the latter hands over the Identikit, which contains a tape of a younger Faye leaving a hopeful message for her future self. While this does not explicitly leave Faye with clues about her past, she is able to deduce the exact location of her childhood home, which seems to be situated somewhere on Greenvale Avenue, most probably on Earth prior to the Gate accident. The season ends with Faye heading out on her own to find out who her real family is, setting up Cowboy Bebop season 2 to reveal more about her backstory — if the series returns.
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