diff --git a/mono/metadata/class-init.c b/mono/metadata/class-init.c
index 88fe3f4e0c98..65f16713adc4 100644
--- a/mono/metadata/class-init.c
+++ b/mono/metadata/class-init.c
@@ -1124,8 +1124,10 @@ mono_class_create_bounded_array (MonoClass *eclass, guint32 rank, gboolean bound
 
 	mono_class_setup_supertypes (klass);
 
-	if (mono_class_is_ginst (eclass))
-		mono_class_init_internal (eclass);
+	// NOTE: this is probably too aggressive if eclass is not a valuetype.  It looks like we
+	// only need the size info in order to set MonoClass:has_references for this array type -
+	// and for that we only need to setup the fields of the element type if it's not a reference
+	// type.
 	if (!eclass->size_inited)
 		mono_class_setup_fields (eclass);
 	mono_class_set_type_load_failure_causedby_class (klass, eclass, "Could not load array element type");