After this week, we’ve only got two episodes left in this season of House of the Dragon, and it’s increasingly looking like we’ll end with another famous event in the Dance of the Dragons—one even more monumental than the Battle of the Gullet.
But that’s just speculation, of course, and this week, we’ve got plenty of blood, mud, vomit, manipulation, and intrigue to wade through before we get there. We open in the forest, where the soldiers still following Ser Criston Cole creep toward a camp filled with the bodies of Rivermen. While Team Green is puzzling through what could have happened to them, one of the corpses springs to life. It’s a trap! A lively brawl ensues, with Cole personally killing several men with his sword and, more graphically, his flail. “We light the way!” he yells. It’s the motto of House Hightower, and he’s finally feeling victorious. Not so fast. It turns out the camp is surrounded on all sides by Tully’s army and the Winter Wolves. Cole is more than ready to go down fighting—we see him carefully wrap Alicent’s handkerchief around the hilt of his sword—but before he can make a move, he’s hit by a trio of well-aimed arrows and dies. It almost mirrors Jace’s death in the Gullet, except in that case, Jace thought he was going to make it out alive. Cole’s been waiting to die since this march began.
