18 TV Characters Everyone Loves To Hate But Actually Did Nothing Wrong
We asked the BuzzFeed Community which hated TV characters actually didn't deserve the animosity they got. Here's what they said:
There are some spoilers ahead!
1.Jeremiah Fisher from The Summer I Turned Pretty
"Jere isn't perfect, but people really act like he is the devil (and I don't wanna hear anything about the books, because right now, we're talking about the show). I don't hate Conrad, either, but I just can't stand the double standard. When Jeremiah does something, people will make it SUCH a big deal, but when Conrad does the EXACT same thing, people will say, 'Oh, he's going through a hard time with his mom and everything.' Um...Jere is his brother so they are going through the SAME THING! 😩"
2.Cassie Howard from Euphoria
"People are forgetting she is a 17-year-old girl making 17-year-old-girl decisions. Everyone expects her to make sound adult decisions when I am sure none of us were doing exactly that when we were 17. Also, not to mention she had an extremely traumatic experience in Season 1 and has yet to process it. I think she needs a little empathy is all."
"She's dealt with a LOT of traumatic experiences, if we consider the backstory with her father. Growing up with a father addicted to drugs and a mother with alcoholism is traumatic in itself. Can you really be surprised that the girl tried to find love wherever she could?
That isn’t to excuse her for betraying/hurting her best friend, but give the poor girl a break. She’s a teenager, and teenagers do dumb, shitty things. Their concept of the world is so small."
3.Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
"People wouldn’t bat an eyelash if the gender roles were reversed and she was never even meant to be a serious character. Her show was made to be a comedy, and Jennifer Walters fits perfectly in it. I truly believe she’s likable, a good superhero, and will interact well with other Avengers if Marvel chooses to do that."
4.Imogen Heaney from Heartstopper
"She had a crush on a guy who wasn't into her, and people took that as her trying to ruin Nick and Charlie's relationship even though she didn't even know about it. Her character development in Season 2 made her even better, in my opinion."
5.Ash Tyler from Star Trek: Discovery
This submission mentions sexual assault.
"This man had his entire body mutilated in a surgery to make him appear human, and the trauma literally caused him to lose his memory. He didn't know he was a Klingon spy; he believed he was this human man. He was suffering from severe trauma and severe PTSD having been a sexual assault survivor, and instead of ever seeing a shred of empathy for him, all I saw was pure, burning hatred. I've seen characters with similar stories get forgiven and have massive fanbases, but Ash never got that. It breaks my heart, because he was my favorite character."
6.Vanessa Abrams from Gossip Girl
"As someone who consumed the books before the show came out, Vanessa was a main character. But they made her into a recurring one for the show and never really gave her any storylines of her own. She sort of just felt forced into other people’s storylines, which made her less of her own character. And then they wrote her out. There’s also something to be said about the inherent anti-Blackness of the choice to make her biracial (Black/white) and just do NOTHING with it. The Gossip Girl writers had no idea what to do with any character who wasn’t white, cisgender, and heterosexual. And while I love the show for what it was, the mistreatment of Vanessa Abrams will always be a stain upon the show for me."
7.Hannah Horvath from Girls
"Hannah gets more hate than she deserves. She wasn't worse than all the other characters on that show. She was in the process of discovering how sheltered her life was up until that point on the show. She was a narcissistic, spoiled brat in a show where all the characters were narcissistic, spoiled brats. The show should have been called 'Seinfeld for Girls.'"
8.Lori Grimes from The Walking Dead
"She was emotionally manipulated by Shane — he took advantage of her when she was at a low point (aka when he literally told Lori her husband was dead). She went as far as giving up her own LIFE so her daughter could live. I will be a Lori Grimes defender till the day I die."
9.Elena Gilbert from The Vampire Diaries
"I hate post-Season 4 criticism about her being selfish and annoying. While she's not the funniest or most badass character on the show, she is shown from the beginning that she's a teenage girl who is incredibly kind, empathetic, resourceful, selfless, and brave despite the trauma she's endured. She sympathizes with others, even as they are victimizing her, she's willing to sacrifice herself for others, and shows a lot of intelligence and quick thinking in stressful situations. I am disappointed with her character development after Season 3, but the core of who she is — the person who was was established since the beginning of the show — is worth admiring, in my opinion."
10.Octavia Blake from The 100
"She had lost everything and lived under the floor for 16 years, then had to lead Wonkru through the second Praimfaya. ... Lincoln had been killed, and she was only, like, 20, and she didn't know anything about how to lead. She was just having a hard time."
11.Skyler White from Breaking Bad
"People haaaated her because she was so suspicious of Walt. Her husband was literally manufacturing and selling meth. And then he made her an accessory to his crimes."
"And not only that, Anna Gunn would get DEATH THREATS simply because she played Skyler on the show. It's scary how some people can't seem to separate actors from their roles."
12.Tara Knowles from Sons of Anarchy
"People just hate her because they’re misogynistic, don’t think she was hot enough (what?!), or they themselves wanted to be with Jax, which makes no sense! He’s a fictional character!! She didn’t deserve to die the way she did. She deserved to raise her kids with a happy ending. I will fight this until my last breath."
13.Mona Wu from Legends of Tomorrow
"She was too young to really fit in with this group of 30-somethings, so she ended up coming across as childish and annoying sometimes. I've said a few times that if she was introduced when Astra, Spooner, and Behrad came along, the younger generation, she'd have been great. I don't dislike her; I just don't think they knew what to do with her. She wasn't bad; she was a victim of shitty writing."
14.Theon Greyjoy from Game of Thrones
"He did some bad things, but no worse than other characters (like Jaime Lannister or the Hound), and got WAY more hate for it. He was canonically 19 years old and in a horrible position. Then, he was brutally tortured and maimed, enslaved for years, and THEN overcame all of that to help Sansa escape, support his sister, and fight in the war. And people STILL hated him! He deserved better."
15.Wilhelmina Slater from Ugly Betty
"We all loved to hate her but should have been rooting for her all along. [She was a] boss queen who worked her way up from the ground to become a fashion powerhouse, only to be passed over by the useless rich son who didn't know anything about fashion."
16.Andy Bernard from The Office
"Toward the end of the series, they wrote him as something totally different than what he started out as. So, I don't agree with how he turned out (and let's be honest — The Office just wasn't great toward the end of the series anyway). But he genuinely made me laugh, and I feel like we all have that one guy at our jobs who is just goofy and in their own world. I quote him all the time, and I feel like when Andy came along is when the series really started getting into its flow."
17.Britta Perry from Community
"She's definitely not a perfect character, but I was always fond of her. She loved her friends, she tried to be a good person (how ever badly she attempted it), and I just always felt so bad for her and about how the writers destroyed her character."
18.And finally, Janice Hosenstein from Friends
"Janice did literally nothing wrong besides have a weird laugh — and yet she is always the most hated one when it's actually Chandler who whines about not being able to get rid of her. He keeps getting back together with her time and time again and then dumping her for the stupidest reasons. He even tells her that he's moving to Yemen, for God's sake! And somehow, she's made to look irritating while he's all funny and charming?"
Did your faves make the list? In the comments below, tell us which characters YOU firmly believe deserve better than the hate they get.
Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.
