I can see it as a point of character development for Theon, and in general about beginning to unite the two of them against Ramsay, but in the end the rape scene doesn't actually change Theon's behavior half as much as it does Sansa's. Up until that point she was basically reverting back to almost the same level of…

I guess I hadn't read much regarding the controversy over that beyond lots of "OMG Sansa was raped, I'm never watching again!", and assumed that it was just general objection to rape. The same basic problem still applies, though: good characters experiencing one horror after another makes up a good bit of this…

What puzzles me about those people is they apparently had no issue with Danerys (I'm done looking up the spelling of her name) was raped at the very beginning of the series, but somehow after four and a half seasons of unremitting horrors (including plenty of other rapes), they suddenly threw a fit about it happening…

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I gather that such drops are often caused by relatively petty things like this. I wouldn't think there'd be much long term impact on the valuation, but for every idiot who thought "oh Vmaniacom is screwed, I better get out now" there's bound to be a hundred who try to make a few…