House of the Dragon Kills Off Another Major Character With Arrow Attack 

House of the Dragon has dealt another fatal blow. 

Because no one is safe in the Game of Thrones spinoff, including Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) and his Team Green army at the Butcher’s Ball.

“Let us begin here. One of me against the two of you,” Cole offered to Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes) and Roderick “Roddy the Ruin” Dustin (Tommy Flanagan) in the July 26 episode. “Will that be enough to make a fight of it?”

Moments later, Cole was struck by two arrows in the chest, then one in the face before collapsing at the Riverlands battlefield, leaving his remaining soldiers to be cut down following the ambush. 

“Cole is an amazing fighter,” Frankel shared during his exit interview on Inside the Episode. “After the days and weeks and months they’ve been traveling, he’s just exhausted. He knows it’s over. I think there’s a relief in that for him.” 

Photo: HBO Max

We last saw Cole clutching a handkerchief belonging to Alicient Hightower (Olivia Cooke), who gifted the memento to her former Kingsguard member-turned-lover. 

“I imagine that when you die, you think about the people that you love,” Frankel surmised. “That’s what he thinks about before he dies.”

Cole’s demise was the second major loss this season for Alicient, whose father Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) got the royal treatment after Rhaenyra beheaded him.

Meanwhile, each death was also a strategic move as showrunner Ryan Condal wraps up his adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood book with a fourth and final season. 

“The finale for season three is pretty bananas,” Condal revealed in an exclusive chat with SYFY Wire. “We were able to plan it, write to it and use it as the stepping stone to set up the endgame—the final act in season four.”

Season three of House of the Dragon streams on HBO Max, with new episodes dropping Sundays.