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Both Jace and now Criston Cole were pumped full of arrows, but Cole’s death was especially significant, given that he’s been such a huge part of the show since the beginning and has endured one of its most dramatic transformations. But it’s a strange situation. We saw someone kill Cole that…almost no one actually recognizes, short of lore enthusiasts. So, who was that woman who killed Criston Cole with two arrows to the gut and one to the face?

That is Alysanne Blackwood, played by Annie Shapero, and not just some random soldier. She’s known as “Black Aly,” a famous archer and the aunt of Lord Benjicot Blackwood. She was also the second wife of Lord Cregan Stark of Winterfell.

Here execution of Cole is a change from the book, as there Cole is shot by three Blackwood archers, but they’ve been turned into just Aly for the show. I don’t believe her eye black is in the book, but it’s not just to look cool; it’s for more precise archery, giving better vision during the day, as we see with NFL football players. She definitely did not “miss” his head with those first two arrows, which were no doubt placed on purpose.

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House Blackwood has not been a terribly major house in at least the Game of Thrones shows. They’re from the Riverlands and depending on how things go with House of the Dragon’s faithfulness to the books, they have another significant moment later, but I won’t spoil that one since we’re not there yet.

There are complaints from book-readers about Cole’s death, not about Alysanne being the one to shoot him, but rather a missing quote that was quite cool. That’s Pate saying “I’ll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker. There’s tens o’ thousands dead on your account.” It references a line Cole said earlier, so it would be sort of weird to hear it here with no way for Pate to have heard that, but some fans are upset it was missing all the same. Rather, there was a different, I might argue better, quote from young Oscar Tully, “I made a promise to the dead Cole, I promised I’d build a sept out of traitors’ bones. I don’t have near enough bones yet.”

All in all, I thought this was handled well, at least as someone who is a non-book reader. Cole didn’t really deserve better after all he’d done, and becoming a legendary warrior with a glorious death wasn’t something he’d earned. Great scene.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.