The early hate was just in the period where TNG was trying to figure itself out, and if you couldn't relate to Wesley in some way, you hated him for his part. But it got better, and the show needed that age representative.

I didn't like or dislike the character. I just found the Westley Crusher side arcs of zero interest and basically time wasters.

As in, I watched Star Trek to watch, ya know, star treks - space stuff, aliens, adventure at the frontier of the know universe and crazy science fiction. I didn't watch Star Trek to watch a teenager come of age: I already had one at home.

I grew up on the original Star Trek. It probably shaped my expectations.

Probably the first time I really understood a little bit of the hate was when I watched Galaxy Quest and their parody of him was a little child. It's just a little bit out-of-odds with the setting that there's this goofy kid there all the time.

I liked him, too. There’s probably dozens of us!

I'm in the early-ish stages of a full Star Trek rewatch (or watch for the first time, for a couple of series). Apropos, I was on the penultimate episode of TAS when news about Stewart broke. Finished TAS, watched The Inner Light, then started TNG.

I guess what I'll say about the "hate" for Wesley is that we– the audience– were told to hate Wesley, at least in the first part of season one. Picard had active disdain for him, and the entire crew simply called him "the boy." Roddenberry was like George Lucas in my opinion; the best there was at the big ideas, woefully bad ad the small ones. Individual episode writing and character development being "small" in this context.

Same. He played a nerdy kid that spent more time interacting with the adults around him than other kids, even if they didn't always take him seriously. I identified with that a lot. And it never hurt that Wil is only a year or so older than me in real life, and had a lot of the same interests. I grew up seeing him as both a peer and a role-model.

The people hating him we about the same age and jealous