The Dance of the Dragons just lost its most reviled maestro.
In the blood-soaked opening minutes of House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 6, fans finally witnessed a moment they’ve been anticipating for years. But the HBO showrunners delivered it with an anticlimactic, brilliantly frustrating twist. Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and architect of so much Targaryen misery, is dead.
He didn’t get a blaze of glory. He didn’t get a song. He just got three arrows to the body, fired by a woman who couldn’t care less about his desire for a warrior’s death.
Between a major canon-breaking character survival and a wave of covert killings, “Assassination Nation” fundamentally rewrites the trajectory of the Targaryen civil war. Here is the breakdown of an episode that proved, once again, that Westeros is completely indifferent to the egos of men.
The Butcher’s Ball: Ser Criston Cole Meets the Stranger
Criston Cole spent two and a half seasons cementing himself as one of the most detestable characters in television history. Going into Episode 6, Cole was leading the remnants of his army on what amounted to a suicide mission. Heavily outnumbered, they stumbled upon what appeared to be a vulnerable Rivermen encampment.
It was a trap.
The Rivermen, playing dead to deceive the Kingsguard, sprang the ambush. Surrounded by Team Black’s forces—led by Roddy the Ruin (Tommy Flanagan) and Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes)—Cole recognized that his campaign was over. True to his narcissistic brand of honor, he attempted to bargain for the lives of his men by offering surrender, which was swiftly rejected. Desperate for a dignified exit, Cole then challenged both Oscar and Roderick to two-on-one combat.
Team Black simply didn’t care.
Before the lords even deigned to respond to his grandstand, archer Alysanne “Black Aly” Blackwood (Annie Shapero) let loose three arrows—including one straight to his face. He died instantly, and the Rivermen immediately descended upon the rest of his host to slaughter them.
“No Songs About How Brave You Died”
Readers of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood know this massacre as the Butcher’s Ball. The show executed the scene with a dark irony that perfectly suited Cole’s tragic arc.
“He regained some sense of purpose, I think, [just] to have it struck down again,” actor Fabien Frankel recently explained regarding Cole’s Season 3 trajectory. “It would be hard for me to argue that he’s a good guy. Obviously, when you’re playing any character — good, bad — you’re trying to find the humanity”.
That humanity was stripped away on the battlefield. As noted by one Riverlands knight in the source material, the intent of Team Black was absolute: “I’ll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker”. HBO ensured that Cole’s televised demise was as undignified and abrupt as his victims’ lives were.
Assassination Nation: Rhaenyra’s Covert War
While the Riverlands ran red with Cole’s blood, King’s Landing devolved into a shadowy warzone. NPR critic Glen Weldon aptly summarized the episode’s overarching theme as an “Assassination nation,” and for good reason.
With her army still more than two weeks away from the critical stronghold of Tumbleton, Rhaenyra is forced to pivot to espionage. Following the shocking discovery of 25 murdered Gold Cloaks—who had essentially unionized and walked out of their posts—Team Black retaliates with brutal efficiency. Daemon (Matt Smith) personally tracks down and executes the man who orchestrated the Gold Cloak murders on behalf of the Greens.
But the most desperate assassination plot comes from within the Red Keep itself. Alicent (Olivia Cooke) reveals to Rhaenyra that Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is currently stationed at Harrenhal without his massive dragon, Vhagar. In a devastating ultimatum, Rhaenyra tasks Alicent with traveling to Harrenhal to kill her own son in exchange for her and Helaena’s freedom.
The Gwayne Hightower Ripple Effect
While Cole’s death aligns with Martin’s lore, Episode 6 features a massive departure from Fire & Blood that threatens to rewrite the Dance of the Dragons.
Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) is still breathing. In the books, Gwayne perishes long before these events. However, the show sees Gwayne abandoning Cole in the Riverlands after learning of the Lord Commander’s suicidal intentions, choosing instead to join Ormund in Tumbleton. His survival introduces a major “butterfly effect” into the narrative. By keeping a competent, high-ranking Hightower general on the board during the impending battle at Tumbleton, the HBO writers have given the Greens a tactical advantage that doesn’t exist in the historical text.
With Cole dead, Aemond marked for assassination by his own mother, and Gwayne Hightower rewriting history in real-time, the board is set for a chaotic final stretch of the season.
Sources Quoted:
Data, quotes, and narrative details were sourced from recent analyses and recaps published by Men’s Journal, Time Magazine, The Times of India, Business Insider, and NPR (Glen Weldon).
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