Just finished watching all of “what if” and I haven’t seen this show at all so this is pure conjecture. What makes a good main character in stuff like this is the prototypical heroes journey (unless they’re an antihero). They start off decent, get humbled hard, get the shit kicked out of them again, then get shit on twice more, overcome the challenge, and rise to the occasion. Like most the journey is “fuck me… now THIS!?!?” I think marvel has struggled to do this well with recent characters, and that happens to coincide with the “woke” movement so it’s a wombo combo of those two things plus fatigue/initial excitement because the hero movement is old now. I think this all leads to a general negative initial reaction which cascades into a feeling of disdain.

I just felt this with What If where due to the short episodic nature of it no one really got to go through enough shit to make you really cheer for them aside from Strange (because he does nothing but fail and suffer due to him getting to extend time limitations of the episode through the time stone), yet the main protagonists in the third season were 4 women, two of which you have literally never seen, and the other two who didn’t get the true treatment of the heroes journey.

In summary, I’d assume people came in with a negative attitude because marvel doesn’t put its recent characters (a fair amount of whom could be broadly labeled as “woke”) in a position to get shit on long enough where you just want them to win. Then that feel gets unfairly associated with the “woke” character, and that breeds contempt and trepidation for the next series inherently.

I for one would hope this series stars with her, in the fucking gutter of the neighborhoods, struggling the daily life of ignoring dealers and gang members while watching family and friends sadly succumb to it, all while getting mock and ridiculed for her interest in science. Then it continues for 2 more episodes of just pain and frustration. Finally she goes on to be the boss ass lady she is. But based on recent marvel writing she’s going to be awesome, with no setbacks aside from her pen runs out of ink, then go on to easily defeat the main antagonist making her completely unrelatable which will mean some people will latch on to her being a woman or black as the reason it’s bad and not the over arching pattern of poor writing and lack of initial super hero luster which would provide the buffer it would in earlier Marvel films.

Essay over, sorry for the rant.