2. Dawn Summers (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
Buffy's often-maligned little sis, Dawn Summers gets a pretty rough deal from the general fans as she diverted the long-time fans' attention away from Buffy's vampire-slaying adventures into being a big sister and surrogate mother figure after their own mother's tragic death, Dawn's reveal of being a ball of mystical energy fashioned into being a human only partially endearing her to the audience. Dawn is often placed in the 'most annoying' category of TV characters, a rather unfair oversight in my opinion. In the series, Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) is faced with a ton of problems such as her mother's death, followed closely by her sister's death and subsequent resurrection and disaffection with the world. In the series, Dawn has to deal with all these as well as Buffy not being there for her, leading her into kleptomania and acting out (her infamous "GET OUT!" moment is, admittedly, annoying as hell). Arguably, she has less of a support system than Buffy who at least had Joyce, Willow, Xander and the others while growing up and didn't have to grow up in the shadow of the most important woman in the world, something which Michelle Trachtenberg portrays well in the series. Despite all this, Dawn also shows incredible strength and maturity in the final season with her actions in the episode 'Potential' highlighting how far Dawn has come and how strong and graceful and brave a character she really is as she hands over her supposed destiny to the right girl. Notably she accepts this with a maturity beyond her teenage years, making her treatment by fans of the show pretty misguided and unfair. Dawn might have been 'whiny' but that doesn't make her useless or terrible. She's her own hero and while she might not be an ultra-competent asskicker like her sister or a witch like no other like Willow, it's an oversight to write her off as a weak and annoying character. Dawn researches and fights and acts as Buffy's touchstone - Joss Whedon's words, not mine - something pretty damn incredible given that she started off as a kid sister to a Slayer and became so much more.