Characters Whose Popularity Made Things Worse
Who is a character who you think gets too much glaze or focus due to fan favoritism causing the quality of their overall product to get worse as a result? I've got a couple examples that come to mind:
- Arya Stark - GoT: She was a common fan favorite through most of the series, but near the end of the show the writers started making her into a superhero to make the fans happy with her journey. Despite failing in nearly all aspects of her assassin training, she powers through and kills the Waif before leaving, somehow having gained the ability to steal faces and a mastery of dueling that put her on par with Brienne of Tarth, who was one of the most successful fighters of the series.
This all capped off with her being the one to kill the Night King, despite there being so many characters around that made way more sense to be the one to finish that plotline, most notably Jon Snow.
- Soldier Boy - The Boys: Soldier Boy was clearly meant to be a much smaller part in the story, obviously the show has gone way off from the comics, which is a GREAT thing, but he was a bit part in the comics and is now the second most important supe in the series after Homelander.
Jensen Ackles does an amazing job and I totally get wanting to give the fans more of his performance, but at this point they don't seem to know what to do with him so he just keeps flipping sides every episode, repeating the same old jokes. Worse he seems to have completely taken the role Black Noir was meant to have in the ending, resulting in Noir getting killed off randomly after finally getting some spotlight, replaced in a panic move to keep "the character" around, and then killed again in one of the dumbest deaths of an already poorly written final season.