10 Female Characters That Received Internet Backlash

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"Someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family."
Skyler White, "Cornered", Breaking Bad

Skyler White (portrayed by Anna Gun) was a female anti-hero and a main reoccurring character that appeared on the television show Breaking Bad from 2008 to 2013. She was the wife of Walter White, the main protagonist of the show, and the mother of a teenage son Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) and an infant daughter, Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich). At the beginning of the series, Skyler is pregnant with Holly and is a caring wife and mother. She cares for her husband Walt very much and becomes very distraught when he is diagnosed with lung cancer. After learning about his cancer, Walt decides to start secretly cooking meth to raise money for his cancer treatment and to help support his family after his death. His criminal endeavours put strain on his marriage due to his unexplained absences and bizarre behaviour. Skyler eventually figures out the truth about his activities and the two of them separate. Skyler attempts to divorce Walter, but he refuses to break off contact with her and the kids, and moves back into the family home against her wishes. Feeling trapped, Skyler feels like she is left with little choice but to become Walt's criminal accomplice and to help him launder his money so she can keep their kids safe from Walt. As Walt becomes more involved in drug manufacturing, Skyler becomes increasingly depressed, horrified, and scared of her husband. She tells him that she no longer feels like his wife and calls herself his hostage. Terrified of her husband, she refuses to leave him, and stands by his side right until the very end of his criminal endeavours.



Anna Gunn received a lot of praise for her portrayal of Skyler. She was awarded The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2013 and 2014 and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series in 2014. Skyler White is such a fascinating character. Critics applauded Gunn for her performance and called her character the template for the perfect female anti-hero. Skyler White was not popular among viewers of the show. The character received an extreme negative reaction from fans who viewed Skyler White as an obstacle to Walter White's criminal schemes. The toxic backlash grew so intense both Anna Gunn and her character began receiving death threats, social media criticism, bullying and harassment. The situation became so bad that in July 2018 Gunn penned an op-ed for The New York Times so she could voice her opinion about the issue. The hatred of Skyler White was so troubling it was labelled "The Skyler White Effect" which is described as "A cognitive dissonance that happens when a female character is presented by the narrative as absolutely correct in their judgement of a male character, and yet the viewers assume she's the bitch."

Skyler White is a well-developed character who becomes a victim of abuse at the hands of Walt. Her situation was a no-win scenario. Her options as a woman trapped in an abusive relationship were incredibly limited. It didn't matter what decision she made, the fans judged her for it, because they held her to a different standard to Walt. I find this interesting because it shows that viewers view female anti-heroes differently to male anti-heroes When Walt does terrible things, the fans embraced him and cheered him on. They saw him as a symbol of repressed manhood and hated Skyler for pointing out that what he was doing was dangerous and he was putting their family in danger. When Skyler made bad choices to protect her family, they judged her harshly for it, because they have different standards for female characters as opposed to male characters. This is called cultural misogyny. In this article, I will discuss 10 Female Characters who received internet backlash similar to Skyler White. Some of them were labelled nags or bitches, others were judged for their skin tone, or for being arrogant, or whiny, or for not dressing or acting feminine enough. This article will contain some spoilers.

1. June Osborne from The Handmaid's Tale


June Osborne (portrayed by Elisabeth Moss) is the main protagonist of the television drama The Handmaid's Tale which is an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's book of the same name. After a civil war, the United States of America is taken over by Christian fascist group called the Sons of Jacob, who transform the country into a totalitarian patriarchal theocracy called the Republic of Gilead. June is captured while attempting to flee at the border with her husband and daughter. She is separated from them both and rounded up with other women, forcibly tagged, and re-educated as a handmaid. Handmaids are an oppressed social class of disgraced fertile women in Gilead who are assigned to the home of powerful men and tasked with getting pregnant by them. The handmaids are selected for breaking Gilead's strict religious laws. June was selected to become a handmaid because she had an affair with her husband Luke when he was still married and he later divorced his wife to be with her.

The TV series follows June as she fights back against the Gilead regime and slowly becomes consumed with anger and rage as she goes to desperate lengths to reunite with her husband and daughter. I was inspired to write this article due to the extreme negative criticism that fans of The Handmaid's Tale have directed towards June Osborne and her arc on the show. June is another character who is in a no-win scenario. Fans have criticised for her glaring at the camera too much, for not trying hard enough to escape, for getting other people killed, for being too angry, for not being angry enough, for not doing enough to rescue her daughter and more. One comment from a user on her Wikipedia page even goes as far as to call her "An unsufferable bitch." When asked in an interview to respond to fan criticism about June, showrunner Bruce Miller said that The Handmaid's Tale isn't a hero's journey or a moral fable. It is June's story and she can tell it how she likes. June is a woman who has endured unspeakable things and doesn't need to be validated and isn't asking for anyone's approval.

2. Sally Reed from Barry


Sally Reed (portrayed by Sarah Goldberg) is one of the main characters in the comedy-drama television series Barry. Sally is an aspiring actress who is determined to do whatever she can to make it as a successful actress. In season one she meets and befriends Barry Berman after he signs up to the same acting class as her. Barry is a former marine turned hitman who turns up at the class to observe his next target. After he is befriended by the other students, Barry develops a real interest in acting, and decides he wants to wants to pursue it. Sally and Barry later go on to develop a romantic relationship. The running gag on the show is that Sally is so self-absorbed with chasing fame she never notices that Barry is a hitman.

Sally Reed has been called one of the most unlikeable characters on Barry. She is an ambitious and very self-centred woman who can be very emotional at times. In an interview , Sarah Goldberg spoke about Sally's narcissism, and how Barry doesn't see her flaws because he is desperate to become apart of her world and leave contract killing behind. Sally is a woman who has suffered a lot of trauma and has a lot of deep cracks in her emotional armour. She uses acting as a form of therapy and to build up her self-esteem. She is completely convinced that if she puts in enough work, she has what it takes to become the best actress in the world. Sarah Goldberg commented that she finds it amusing that her character comes across as so unlikeable on a show filled with violent, ruthless men. Why do viewers have such an appetite for male violence but react so negatively to female ambition?

3. Callie Sadecki from Yellowjackets


Callie Sadecki (portrayed by Sarah Desjardins) is a reoccurring character on the coming-of-age survival drama series Yellowjackets. She is the teenage daughter of Jeff and Shauna Sadecki. 25 years ago, her mother Shauna was a member of an all-star soccer team, the Yellowjackets, which was destined for the nationals when the plane carrying them all crashed in a remote area. The series chronicles how the team mates survived in the wilderness and how their experiences continue to haunt them in the present.

Callie is seventeen-years-old and is very much a typical teenager. She pushes boundaries, talks back to her parents, and can be sarcastic and moody. Callie is a complicated person largely in part because she grew up with Shauna as her mother. Shauna has a lot of trauma from her time in the wilderness. She has problems with expressing and dealing with her feelings, so she keeps her anger bottled up inside, which makes her act cold and detached a lot of the time. This puts strain on her relationship with Callie.

A lot of fans like Shauna and have embraced her as an anti-hero. She is allowed to make mistakes and have flaws and is cheered on when she expresses her emotions and shows what a damaged person she is. When Callie makes mistakes or expresses emotions, fans show her little compassion and view her as a teenage brat. A lot of views view Callie as the Skyler White of Yellowjackets. They hate it when she tries to blackmail her mother or when she calls her out on her lies and bad behaviour. I think this unfair because Callie is a kid who grew up in a house filled with lies and has always been an afterthought in the eyes of her parents. She has every right to be emotional. She is a victim of generational trauma.

4. Midge Maisel from the Marvellous Mrs. Maisel


Miriam "Midge" Maisel (portrayed by Rachel Brosnahan) is the main protagonist on the comedy-drama series The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. The show was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino for the Amazon Prime Video streaming service and premiered on 17 March 2017. The series is set in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s and follows a Jewish housewife, Miriam "Midge" Maisel, who discovers that she has a talent for stand-up comedy and decides to pursue a career in it after her husband leaves her for his secretary.

The reaction from viewers to the show has largely been positive, with many people embracing Mrs. Maisel as a positive role model and a feminist icon, but there has been one piece of commentary that keeps resurfacing and that is a lot of people think that Midge is not a good mother because she is a working parent. The constant criticism of Midge's parenting skills has been frustrating for the people involved in the making of the show. The focus of the show is not meant to be on motherhood. It is supposed to be a show about a working single mother who tries to make a career for herself in stand-up comedy while also raising two small children.

A lot of viewers have questioned how Midge can balance a career and be a loving caregiver to her children at the same time. They frequently demand to see proof that Midge is a good mother. They think that if they don't see her parenting her children then she must not love them or want them around. She has been accused of disliking her children, dumping them with relatives, and viewing them as accessories. What I find interesting is that the fans who judge Midge never seem to question the parenting skills of her ex-husband Joel. No one judges Joel for being a working parent or having interests outside of parenthood. Why is it ok for Joel to be a working parent but it is not ok for Midge to also pursue a career?

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a show about a woman with ambition who makes the choice to step out from the shadow of her ex-husband and to let the spotlight of fame shine onto her and I think that's great. Alex Borstein, who plays Midge's manager Susie on the show, said in an interview that she believed the show was about choice. Miriam chooses to work but that doesn't make her a bad mother and it doesn't make her neglectful. It just shows the viewer that Midge has a life outside of her children.

5. Brianna MacKenzie from Outlander


Brianna McKenzie (portrayed by Sophie Skelton) is the daughter of Claire and Jamie Frasier on the historical drama Outlander. Her parents met when her mother, Claire, who served as a World War Two combat nurse, stepped through a stone circle while on a second honeymoon with her husband Frank in the Scottish Highlands in 1945 and accidentally found herself transported two hundred years ago into the past. While she was trapped in the 18th century, Claire was forced into marrying Jamie Frasier, a red-headed and intelligent young man. The two of them fell in love and got wrapped up in the complicated political climate of the time. When Claire became pregnant with Brianna, Jamie made the decision to send her back through the stones to the future, fearing for their safety as the Battle of Culloden approached. Claire returned to the future, believing that Jamie died at the battle of Culloden, and reunited with her first husband Frank. The two of them moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and Claire gave birth to Brianna in 1948. Claire and Frank agreed to raise Brianna together and to never mention that Jamie was her birth father. After Frank passes away, Claire told Brianna the truth, and traveled back in time to reunite with Jamie. Brianna eventually goes through the stones herself, determined to reunite with her mother, and to meet Jamie.

A lot of fans have expressed dislike with the TV adaptation of Brianna's character. The long list of complaints directed at Brianna is very misogynistic. She has been criticised for having a temper, for idolizing her adoptive father Frank, and for giving up her career to be a housewife. She has been labelled a damsel in distress and called dull, immature, impulsive, manipulative, and self-righteous. The complaints about Brianna have always frustrated me. I've always felt that she is not deserving of so much hate. Brianna is a complicated person who can be messy and emotional at times, but she is also a highly educated and strong-willed young woman, who inherited her father's stubbornness and her mother's feminist sense of independence. When asked in an interview about Brianna's bad press, Sophie Skelton commented that she sometimes felt that the Outlander fan community could be "intense" and confessed that she felt protective of Brianna and saw her as a female version of Jamie. She agreed that Brianna could be bratty and rude sometimes, but also pointed out that she's led a tough life, and has been subjected to horrible trauma. She deserves a break.

6. Peggy Hill from King of the Hill


Peggy Hill was a character voiced by Kathy Najimy that appeared on the animated television series King of the Hill from 1997 to 2010. Peggy is the matriarch of the Hill family, the wife of protagonist Hank Hill, mother to son Bobby Hill, and the aunt of Luanne Platter. Peggy is a complex and well-written character with several character flaws. She is a strong and independent Texan woman and a devoted wife, mother, and friend. Peggy is a very arrogant woman, who has a high opinion of herself, and usually considers herself to be smarter than everyone else. She is a very confident woman who believes that she can do anything if she sets her mind to it. Her confidence helped her to become gifted at sports and to go on to win the Texas State Boggle Championship. Peggy's superiority confidence was a running joke on King of the Hill. Peggy thinks she speaks Spanish fluently, but the truth is she is speaks it very poorly, and has a very limited understanding of the language. Peggy prides herself on her cooking ability, while others consider her skills to be average. Peggy regularly cooks a dish that she calls "Spa-Peggy and meatballs" which is just spaghetti with meatballs. Peggy has been called "The most hated wife and mother on adult animated TV" due to her arrogance and inflated sense of self-worth. I have always loved Peggy Hill as a character. I don't think she is any worse than any of the other characters on King of the Hill. I think she is a good wife and mother, deeply flawed sometimes, but someone who has a good heart.

7. Dawn Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer


Dawn Summers was a character on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer who was played by Michelle Trachtenberg. She was a member of the Scooby Gang and the sister of Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the main character of the show, a girl who was chosen by fate to fight evil as a vampire slayer. Dawn was introduced in the fifth season of the show and became part of the main cast until the show concluded at the end of its seventh season. Before she was human, Dawn used to be a ball of magical energy known as the Key, which had the power to unlock the gates between dimensions. When the evil hell-god Glorificus began looking for the Key, the monks that looked after it used magic and the Slayer's own essence to transform the Key into a human and sent it to Buffy as her 14-year-old sister Dawn. The monks altered reality to insert Dawn into Buffy's life and changed everyone's memories so they always remembered her being present.

After Dawn discovered the truth of her origins, she had an identity crisis, and started self-harming and acting out even more. A short time later, Dawn suffered another trauma when her mother died unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm, leaving her in the care of her older sister Buffy. At the end of season five, Dawn was delivered another devastating blow, when Buffy made the decision to sacrifice her life so Dawn could live. Dawn's arrival was heavily foreshadowed for years before her she was introduced as a character. Fans reacted negatively to Dawn's arrival at the beginning of season five. People complained that she was immature, sulky, jealous of Buffy, and always breaking things. It's not surprising that Dawn has issues. She is a teenage girl who has to deal with the fact she is not real and then suffers the death of her mother and sister. It makes sense that she would have a lot of issues and would question her existence and struggle with feelings of abandonment.

8. Reva Sevander from Obi-Wan Kenobi


Reva Sevander (portrayed by Moses Ingram) was the antagonist of the Star Wars spin-off television series Obi-Wan Kenobi. Reva Sevander was a force sensitive human female who was raised as a Jedi and lived at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant as a young child. She was present during Order 66 when Darth Vader, then known as Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, attacked the Jedi Temple with a legion of clonetroopers and butchered the Jedi. Reva survived the attack and immediately swore revenge on Darth Vader. She turned to the dark side and joined the Empire as a dark-side agent in the hope that she would be able to get close enough to Darth Vader to kill him.

When it was announced that Moses Ingram had been cast as Reva Sevander in Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ingram became the victim of a horrendous online hate campaign. She received hundreds of hateful messages online containing death threats and racial abuse. The online harassment became so bad it prompted Disney and her colleagues, including Ewan McGregor, to call out the abusive messages as offensive and racist. Ingram's harassment wasn't the first time that the Star Wars fanbase has been racist. Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega also received abuse from fans for their roles in the series. Fans disliked Reva because they thought she was whiny, too angry, poorly written and they claimed that the decision to cast Moses Ingram in the role was Disney being woke.

9. Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power


The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an action-adventure fantasy television series developed for the streaming service Amazon Prime Video that was based on J.R.R Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings. The show is a prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and is set thousands of years in the past. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiered on 1 September 2022 and holds the record of the most expensive television series ever made. The show recounts the major events that take place during Middle-Earth's second age which include the forging of the Rings of Power, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the last alliance between Elves and Men and the downfall of the island kingdom of Númenor.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power drew in a big audience and received praise from critics but drew a frosty response from some fans who complained that the casting was too diverse and that the show strayed too far from the original source material. A large part of fans dislike centred around the main protagonist of the show, Galadriel, who was portrayed by Welsh actress Morfydd Clark. Fans disliked that Galadriel was re-imagined for the show as a brave warrior who was determined to defeat Sauron at whatever the cost. Die-hard Tolkien fans complained that this was too much of a drastic change from the original source material. Some people even went as far as to claim that all the male characters on the show were cowards compared to Galadriel and accused the show of being woke. Galadriel was criticised for being arrogant, entitled, angry and unlikeable and Clark's acting was called bland.

10. Abby Anderson from The Last of Us: Part Two


Abby Anderson (portrayed by Laura Bailey) was a dual protagonist and playable character in the survival horror video game The Last of Us Part II. The Last of Us is a third-person action-adventure video game series developed by Naughty Dog set in a post-apocalyptic United States after a fungal infection has wiped out most of humanity. The first game in the series, The Last of Us, was released in 2013 and told the story of survivors Joel and Ellie as they struggled to find a cure for the Cordyceps brain infection. The Last of Us was a phenomenal success and became a pop culture sensation. When it was announced that Naughty Dog was going to be releasing a sequel, fan anticipation hit a fever pitch. The Last of Us Part II was released on 19 June 2020. It was set five years after the events of the first game and continued the story of Ellie and Joel.

Abby Anderson was introduced as a character in The Last of Us Part II. She was a former member of the Fireflies who suffered an unspeakable tragedy when Joel murdered her father to stop him from taking Ellie's life to make a cure to the Cordyceps brain infection. Her quest for vengeance drives her to embark on a journey to find Joel. She tracks him down to a settlement and murders him in front of Ellie. Afterwards, Ellie becomes consumed with hate and sets off to find Abby, determined to kill her to get justice for Joel. The Last of Us Part II was a massive success and received rave reviews. The game also received a lot of negative backlash from a select group of loud misogynistic fans who whipped themselves up into a seething rage about Abby Anderson. They hated her for killing Joel and disliked that she was a dual protagonist in the game with many playable chapters. They body shamed Abby for having a muscular physique and theorized that she might even be transgender. The backlash towards Abby became so vile, some fans claimed that the game was not cannon, and Laura Bailey became the target of online death threats which prompted Naughty Dog to release a statement condemning the harassment. In an interview , Bailey called the negative backlash to the game "The worst storm that could have ever happened" and commented that she still gets harassed online sometimes from fans who are still angry about Abby's role in The Last of Us Part II.

More TV Show Reviews by Marisa
10 Amazing Female Fictional Characters
10 Great Songs Featured in the Marvelous Mrs Maisel
The Best Spike Episodes From Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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