The self-invented personal name of an elite netdiver from Earth, hacker "Radical Edward" is a very strange, somewhat androgynous, teenage girl assumed to be around 13 years in age. Ed could be considered a "free spirit"; she is fond of silly exclamations and childish rhymes, easily distracted, and the show's primary source of physical humor. It is presumed she has a personality disorder similar to Asperger syndrome or ADHD but this is never specified. Over the course of the show she rarely walks anywhere, preferring to run, crawl, flip, roll, walk on her hands, or even just saunter. She prefers always walking barefoot wherever she goes.

In the English version, she almost always refers to herself in the third person. Not much is known about her origins, only that she spent some of her earlier childhood in an orphanage after being left there by her father, a man named Appledelhi Siniz Hesap Lütfen (he calls Ed "Françoise", and may be of Turkish origin as his name means "excuse me, check please" in Turkish). In the manga it is revealed that she was a friend of a timid young boy in the orphanage known simply as "Tomato" (which also happens to be the brand name scrawled in katakana on his PC) who, like Ed, knew a great deal about computers and the net, and it's probably safe to assume that his friendship with Ed helped turn her into the genius-hacker she is today. Ed's primary use to the Bebop crew is as a hacker; she is widely known to be a whiz kid behind a computer (with the possible exception of Ein the data dog). Ed's computer of choice is a carry-along Tomato desktop, an homage to the portable flatpanel-outfitted Apple IIc from the 80s, and when traveling by foot she will balance it on her head much like Indian women do with baskets. Ed has a strong rapport with Jet, who acts as a surrogate father, and Faye, who acts as something of a big sister (much to Faye's chagrin). Ed also seems to be the only person who can understand Ein.

In the last episodes of the series Ed and Ein decide to stay on Earth, presumably because Ed finally meets her father. The episode in which this occurs is "Hard Luck Woman".

Originally, Ed's character was based on a description of the series' music director ("a little weird, catlike, but a genius at creating music") and was originally going to be a dark-skinned boy. It was changed to even the gender ratio on the Bebop, which was, with Ed as a boy, three guys and one girl. This original character design appears in session 5, stealing a clearly adult magazine from Annie's bookstore by smuggling it under his shirt.