*Warning: Contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault and MAJOR spoilers for Game of Thrones.*
This weekend 10 years ago, TV viewers watched something so harrowing that it caused several fans to threaten boycotts of a hit fantasy series.
By 2015, Game of Thrones had become one of the most popular TV shows in the world – and arguably the most successful fantasy TV series of all time.
Set in the fictional medieval continent of Westeros, Game of Thrones primarily focused on the warring factions and royal families who each longed to sit on the Iron Throne.
A violent, bloody, and graphic series, the HBO show gained rave reviews for the majority of its run and became a global smash hit, even among people who usually avoided the fantasy genre.
But being such a graphic 18+ show meant that it sometimes crossed the line with viewers, especially when it came to the brutal sexual assaults it often depicted.
On this night in 2015, the season five episode Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken crossed so many lines in the eyes of some viewers that a section of them vowed to never watch Game of Thrones again.
From season one to season four, main character Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) had been imprisoned by the royal Lannister family after her father’s execution. And at just 13 years old, she was forcibly married to Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage).
Sansa was eventually smuggled away from the Lannisters and, by season five, had been escorted back to where she’d started the series: her home castle, Winterfell.
The Starks had ruled Winterfell for generations but, after a deadly war during seasons two and three, the Bolton family now had control – and no Bolton was as cruel as military commander Ramsay (Iwan Rheon).
Sadistic and twisted, Ramsay had already horrified viewers when he captured and tortured Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), eventually castrating him during a sick sexual game.
Theon was still Ramsay’s prisoner at Winterfell when Sansa – now aged 15 – returned to the castle and was instructed to marry the evil Bolton boy.
On their tragic wedding night, Ramsay fiercely ripped Sansa’s clothes off and raped her, while also forcing a helpless and tearful Theon to watch.
The episode attracted 6.24 million viewers, but many of them – TV critics and fans alike – were outraged by the decision to take Sansa’s story in this direction.
One Reddit user, account now deleted, summed up many fans’ feelings by saying: ‘Before each episode, I ask myself how much worse will Sansa’s life get today. [It turns out] much worse.’
From seasons one to five Game of Thrones had been criticised for its frequent female nudity, while many viewers claimed that lead female characters were raped in order to further progress their stories.
Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) was raped in the first episode, while Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) had also been raped by her brother Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in season four.
The term ‘sexposition’ had also been coined to describe scenes in the show that used nudity and sex as a titillating distraction while crucial plot information was divulged by another character.
Following four seasons of this reputation building and building, the incident involving Sansa, Ramsay, and Theon was seen as one step too far, with Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken being the final straw for some viewers.
TV writer Joanna Robinson asked in Vanity Fair: ‘Did they really need to go there? Did we really need to see Ramsay Bolton rape Sansa Stark? No, we absolutely did not.’
The creative decision to focus the camera on Theon’s face instead of Sansa’s at the scene’s climax also drew criticism, with some viewers hammering the show for placing a man at the centre of a woman’s story.
Reddit user Fat_Walda argued that the scene portrayed Sansa as ‘the damsel in distress’ and as little more than ‘a vehicle for Theon’s redemption’.
The morning after, many fans called for a boycott of Game of Thrones, with United States senator Claire McCaskill among them after describing the episode as ‘disgusting’.
She wrote on X at the time: ‘Ok, I’m done [with] Game of Thrones. Gratuitous rape scene disgusting and unacceptable. It was a rocky ride that just ended.’
Sezin Koehler, writing for Huffington Post, joined the boycott and chastised the writers for having ‘beloved young girl characters brutally and repeatedly raped, tortured, and murdered.’
However, according to Jeremy Podeswa – who directed Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken – Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss were reportedly ‘influenced’ by the angry reaction and subsequently made changes to future episodes.
He said in December 2015: ‘They did not want to be too overly influenced by [the criticism], but they did absorb and take it in and it did influence them in a way.’
Amid the calls for a boycott, viewing figures for the following episode, titled The Gift, dropped to 5.4 million – although many analysts attributed the drop in ratings to the Memorial Day weekend holiday in America.
For the episode two weeks on, titled Hardhome, viewing figures reached an all-time series high of 7.01 million, indicating that calls for a boycott hadn’t reached everyone.
In the years since Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’s initial broadcast, its reputation hasn’t improved much in the wider TV-watcher community, but it has been defended by some fans of the show.
Horror author and culture writer Gretchen Felker-Martin argued: ‘Game of Thrones is one of the only shows on TV making a meaningful inquiry into rape as both a traumatic experience and as a weapon deployed by society against women.’
She added: ‘Treating Sansa as a real person who’s been wronged by her creators, rather than a fictional one in a story explicitly about the different forms of violence people go through, is also a disturbing misapprehension of art’s nature.’
A year later, Sezin Keohler wrote a second letter saying she’d ended her boycott because of how ’empowering’ later episodes had been for female characters – Sansa in particular.
In 2021, Professor Feona Attwood told the Game of Thrones fan podcast The Longest Night that ‘the dialogue around the show [suggested] there was a correct way to depict rape.
‘[Suggesting that rape scenes] should be shot in a certain way… How dull and uninteresting would it be if there were rules about how certain events unfold?’
Sophie Turner herself spoke strongly to The Times (via The Sun) in 2017: ‘The more we talk about sexual assault the better – screw the people who are saying we shouldn’t be putting this on TV, and screw the people who are saying they’re going to boycott the show because of it.
‘[Rape] used to happen and it continues to happen now. If we treat it as a taboo subject, then how are people going to have the strength to come out and feel comfortable saying that this has happened to them?’
Game of Thrones was later praised for Sansa’s story from season six onwards, as she used military cunning to get revenge on Ramsay, reclaim Winterfell, execute her rapist, and eventually rule as Queen in the North.
Watch Game of Thrones on SkyGo, Sky Atlantic, and NowTV.
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