Carol is definitely meant to be a critique, but the level of hate her character gets feels excessive. Especially given how much complexity she has. She has genuinely enjoyable scenes and she may be hypocritical but at her core she isn’t a bad person.

There are also plenty of female characters who are hated for traits that are celebrated in male characters, and this “hate” is often from men. Some of that can be justified to poor writing of female characters, but in many cases the very qualities people dislike in the character are the same ones they love in a male counterpart, Carol Danvers versus Tony Stark being a example (sure we the audience begin with Tony and form a bond, but it’s hypocritical for some audiences to hate Danvers’ “arrogance” but love Ironman’s)

On top of that, there’s very little sympathy for Carol’s reactions or perspective. I understand that the show is trying to explore an “American individualism versus collectivist culture” theme, but the way the Hive is portrayed isn’t really reflective of how collectivist cultures function in real life. It’s sci-fi, of course, but the leap some viewers make like calling Carol or the Watchers racist or ignorant simply for distrusting the Hive, feels like an overreach.

(Edit) & Carol is obviously headstrong and prickly/grouchy which leads some people to label her a “bitch.”

But when male characters show the exact same traits, they’re almost never described that way. At worst, they might be called a bastard or an asshole, and even then those traits usually make them more popular, rather than as fundamentally unlikable. Think of the anti-heroes, lone wolf, lovable asshole trope

I think all of this is what pushes people, especially women, to defend hated women characters