‘House of the Dragon’ Just Took One of Its Best Characters Off the Board

Major spoilers for House of the Dragon season three, episode 6 below. You’ve been warned.Ser Criston Cole’s watch has ended. Within the first ten minutes or so of this week’s House of the Dragon, the most polarizing knight in Westeros has joined countless others as the latest casualty in a familial squabble turned civil war.Doom has followed Cole (Fabien Frankel) for the better part of a season and a half. Ever since the horrific battle of Rook’s Rest in season two, Cole’s understood that he’s but an ant under the foot of a giant. Warfare with sword and shield was one thing, but Cole’s encounter with a walking, flying, fire-breathing beast capable of reducing people and buildings to ash in the blink of an eye opened his eyes up to the void, and he’s lingered there ever since, staring right into it.That’s a deep, dark, and overall pretty nihilistic arc for a character, let alone someone like Cole. Both understandably and perhaps a bit unfairly, Cole’s come under fire from fans of the show for the way he’s conducted himself after switching allegiances from Rhaenyra to Alicent. While some saw him as smug, pious, hypocritical, or even incel-adjacent, but Frankel brought so much depth to the character. His performance often reminded me of the best heel work in WWE; sometimes people need a character to hate, and it felt as if showrunner Ryan Condal and Frankel were more than willing to offer up Cole in that position.Which is why his season three arc has been so utterly compelling. Across both House of the Dragon and even last year’s superlative Task, Frankel’s carved out an niche for himself playing characters obsessed with absolution. So many of the other titles Cole’s taken on throughout the series center on pretense; at the end of the day, he's a fighter who became elevated far beyond his station because he was in the right place at the right time.And looking back, season three has been a clear death march for the character. Rook’s Rest rearranged his thought process so drastically that he found freedom in nihilism. But having embraced the notion that the humans on the ground have no role to play in a dance of dragons, it was only a matter of time before his end arrived; he finally communicated that death wish aloud to Gwayne (Freddie Fox) in last week’s installment before marching to his fate.The events that unfold in the field at the start of the episode—referred to as the Butcher’s Ball in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood novel—are as dastardly as anticipated by Martin’s text. Surviving a brutal ambush is just one phase of a two-part trap. As Cole begins to challenge Lord Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes) and Lord Roderick Dustin (Tommy Flanagan) to single combat, the two reject the notion, and an archer strikes down Cole. It’s fitting in a way for a character so defined by what others—either those surrounding him in the show or fans of the series—think of him for Cole to choose his fate. Despite the dishonorable way Cole’s death occurs, there’s an honorable freedom in it, a liberation which comes with the understanding that Cole often didn’t get to carve his own path.Cole was the show’s fucked-up beating heart, a character that perfectly personified just how messy, complicated, and outright brutal this entire endeavor has been from the very start. And I’ll miss Frankel’s presence and performance on this show, which will go down as one of my favorites in a series full of stellar acting. Ser Cole is dead. Long may he reign.