Almost everybody hates Criston Cole, played by Fabien Frankel — and by most accounts he has earned it. The yearning, self-regarding knight is one of the most morally misguided players in House of the Dragon, so it was little surprise that audiences cheered his abrupt death in the opening minutes of season 3’s sixth episode, “Faceless Men.”
The realm’s self-proclaimed greatest warrior is felled by three simple arrows — a blunt, almost anticlimactic end for a disgraced knight who spent seasons convinced of his own supremacy.
Before the arrows land, Cole and his battered men face a surprise ambush. He fights masterfully with a chain mace, moving through the chaos with startling grace, but vigor is no match for numbers: the survivors soon find themselves ringed by full armies on both flanks.
The bigger talking point is who fired the fatal shot. The kill belongs to Alysanne Blackwood, and her role in ending Westeros’s most punchable knight instantly reframes one of the season’s most satisfying deaths.
