There are times in my life when I’m okay with a big death in a show. There have been some stunning deaths on Game of Thrones that have altered the course of my life. The first death in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms tore out my heart, stomped on it, and then threw it in the river for good measure. But you know what? I was okay with it because it had meaning. Even for the characters I hated, those deaths had meaning.
I can’t say the same about Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) in House of the Dragon. And I have to talk about how his death was inevitable, but man, I was so bummed with how it was delivered.
I want to preface this little opinion piece by saying I get it. I really do. Criston wanted this huge moment where he gets to fight with honor and go down as the knight he truly was, all for Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and for the realm. Criston getting three arrows, including one to the face, simply because he was denied combat is pretty fitting because of how much of a jerk he was.
Honestly, Criston Cole’s death is basically how it was described in George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, so I really shouldn’t be complaining, right? Even Fabien Frankel wanted the book-accurate death to happen.
Even if I don’t hate how he met his end, I hated the way it was built up.
Criston Cole's death came too early in the episode
When you’re opening an episode of a big show like House of the Dragon, you want to open up with something that is going to set the tone for the entire episode. It could be soldiers preparing for a battle that happens at the end of the episode, or political meetings about a trade, or dragons flying over a sea of bodies.
In my mind, I would have played out his death much differently, where we see Criston at the very beginning with his men, maybe in the forest prior to them discovering the bodies on the ground. Then at the end of the episode, we see the whole scene where they’re attacked but victorious, only for it to be a trap. We have Criston come up and ask for single combat, get denied, get himself shot by Black Aly (Annie Shapero), and fall to the ground, and then the very end could be him collapsing with the arrow sticking out of his eye and his men being charged by the enemy. Now that would have been a way to end the episode.
You’d be thinking the entire time, 'Oh, I hope Criston gets his butt handed to him,' and then you get that payoff at the very end, while waiting to see what the fallout might be next episode. But instead, we were given it at the very beginning, where it was just…extremely anticlimactic.
I dislike Ser Crispy — er, Ser Criston Cole — just as much as the next person. I do think that his death needed to be the same as it was in Fire & Blood, but the way it was presented to us felt even less impactful than it did in the book. If the timing was just switched around a little bit, his death would have hit so much harder.
I suppose in the grand scheme of things it’s fine because he’s still dead and going to become worm food. Let’s be honest, do the worms even want to eat him?
The problem is I feel underwhelmed, and it’ll most likely stay the same. But at least Fabien Frankel got to give Criston a proper goodbye, and now we can all move on.
Now, onto the things that matter — like where the heck is Vhagar? I need answers, and I need them now!
House of the Dragon airs new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
Add us as a preferred source on Google