well let's look at a few reviled legacy characters:

Riri
Ben Reilly
Kyle Rayner

In cases like these it's basically writers tying readers down and saying, "Shut up these are your heroes now and you will like it". These are characters with no prior footing in their mantle's lore and because of that they're already starting at a disadvantage. It also doesn't help that their stories aren't exactly good, and it really doesn't help that sometimes they have to remind us, "Wow Riri you're as smart as Tony Stark!" or "Wow Kyle, you're better than Hal could ever be!" It leaves a bad taste in the mouth for fans of their predecessors.

Looking at well loved legacy characters like:

Wally West
Dick Grayson
Bucky

They start out strong because they are very well invested in their mantle's lore, and it makes sense they take up their friend's mantle after their death because of how close they were. It helps that they all had relatively strong writing and handled any mention of their predecessor pretty respectfully. In the case of Wally, he's honestly more loved than Barry at this point because of how well written and developed his story is, to the point where DC had to retcon him back in after they had retconned him out.



so i guess the gist of it is that legacy characters are delicate and you should write them well if you're going to do it. Don't let guys like Bendis write these characters because that's asking for them to be universally hated