Criston Cole is dead. The character played by Fabien Frankel across three seasons of House of the Dragon is killed at the start of season 3, episode 6 — surrounded by an army, facing certain death, he challenges two foes to single combat before three arrows strike him in the chest and face. The arrows fly from off screen. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Frankel spent five and a half years in the role, appearing in 21 episodes from the 2022 premiere through the current season (Instagram). His first fight scene was against Matt Smith's Daemon Targaryen in the very first episode of season one. His last was the death-scene duel in episode 6 — which, he told The Hollywood Reporter, was the first long choreography sequence he had to learn for the show. The irony is not lost on him: the final battle was the kind of sustained fight work he had never been handed before.

The show's version of Cole's end is a slightly tweaked take on the death described in George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, the fictional history that serves as source material for House of the Dragon (Vulture). In both, Cole meets a violent end in the field; the television adaptation shifts the staging and the manner of the killing.

Frankel gave his exit interview to The Hollywood Reporter on 30 July 2026, but the character's death had already drawn wide coverage. Time wrote about it on 22 July, the New York Times ran its own interview on 26 July, and Vulture published its conversation on 27 July. The death episode clearly landed as a moment.

During the Hollywood Reporter interview, someone delivered flowers to Frankel's hotel room — a small, strange punctuation mark on the end of a five-year job. He told the outlet he had watched only the opening scene of his death episode before sitting down to talk. House of the Dragon airs on Mondays in England, as Frankel noted, which means cast members learn how an episode lands alongside the public.

Frankel has already moved on. Back in December 2023, The Hollywood Reporter reported he had joined an HBO limited series alongside Alison Oliver (The Hollywood Reporter). In April 2026, he appeared at CCXP — a major pop-culture convention in São Paulo — alongside Smith and Olivia Cooke to debut the season 3 trailer (The Hollywood Reporter). He also posted a farewell message on Instagram acknowledging the end of his run on the show.

For an actor whose first scene on the series was a sword fight and whose last was one too, the symmetry is plain to see — even if Frankel himself had only watched the beginning of the end.