20 Most Hated Characters In TV History
6. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Wesley Crusher
In one of the only ways that Star Trek would legitimately act as a metric of how the future would be, Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher - boy genius and irritating little goblin - would become one of the very first characters in television to receive the kind of universal hate campaign that would become commonplace in the 21st century.
Why was Wesley Crusher so loathed and despised? You could scroll through the hundreds and hundreds of threads (and thousands and thousands of posts) on alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die for an answer. You could check out the gobsmacking amount of visual memes online expressing anything from dislike to outright hatred of the character.
Or you could ask Wil Wheaton, the former child star turned author, blogger and advocate, an actor now known and loved mostly just for being himself, rather than for someone he’s not. He’s of the opinion - and he’s not wrong - that the writing was to blame: that Star Trek: The Next Generation writers and producers simply didn’t know what to do with his character once he’d been introduced, and didn’t understand how to make Wesley relatable to fans of the show.
No, Wheaton wasn’t the greatest actor of all time back then - but he was a teenager, and to be fair to him, those early scripts were bobbins: for the most part, ST:TNG didn’t become the show we all remember until the third season, by which point young Wesley’s fate was sealed.
It’s a real shame - the vehemence of the loudest of those haters was so expressive, so explicit, that it affected Wheaton quite deeply. They screeched in Usenet newsgroups - the social media of the day, but for geeks only - about how insufferable Crusher was, how often he’d saved the Enterprise through some bullsh*t deus ex machina, how his smugness made them want to slap him, punch him, choke him to death - you know the drill, you’ve seen it on Twitter a thousand times since then.
Wheaton’s promising acting career never recovered from Star Trek: The Next Generation… but he had the last laugh on all those proto-trolls back in the day. After all, it can’t be so bad - being known and loved mostly for being yourself, rather than someone you’re not.