Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3, episode 6, now streaming on HBO Max.

House of the Dragon just had another deadly episode.

In season 3, episode 6, which premiered Sunday, July 26, on HBO, Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) is killed on the battlefield.

He and his men were greatly outnumbered, facing down Roddy the Ruin (Tommy Flanagan) and Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes) in the riverlands, when he was shot with an arrow three times, including a shot to the face.

He died with a memento from Alicent (Olivia Cooke) around his sword, shortly after Gwyane Hightower (Freddie Fox) abandoned him upon learning he intended to die on the battlefield.

Ahead of the season 3 premiere, Frankel, 32, told PEOPLE that Criston has “accepted some kind of fate that’s not good” after he all but declared himself willing to die in season 2.

“It does change as the course of the series goes on — as the third season goes on — it certainly takes turns,” he said of his character’s trajectory this season. “He regained some sense of purpose, I think, [just] to have it struck down again.

Frankel also said he was hopeful the audience would regain respect for the character in season 3. “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,” he explained.

“He’s a human to me, albeit maybe a flawed one,” Frankel said. “But I don’t see him that way because it’s very un-beneficial to me as an actor to do that, but I completely understand why people react the way they do. It’s not something I wasn’t expecting, if that makes sense.”

“But I’ll be intrigued to see, as season 3 comes in and as we go into season 4, whether that opinion shifts.”

The episode also seemed to include the death of another major character who has been around since season 1.

Steve Toussaint has played Lord Corlys Velaryon, otherwise known as the Sea Snake, since the premiere episode of the Game of Thrones prequel series. At the end of the latest episode, he and his men were snuck up on by a group of Ormund Hightower’s soldiers.

While it was not fully confirmed that Corlys died, he was attacked and choked by a soldier and collapsed to the ground before the episode cut to black, leaving his fate up in the air.

The deaths in episode 6 follow two other major deaths so far this season. The premiere episode of season 3 saw the tragic death of Jace (Harry Collett), which star Emma D’Arcy told PEOPLE is an “unquantifiable loss” for Rhaenyra.

Episode 2 saw the surprise return of Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), who was also killed at the end of the episode. “I think there’s a threshold that gets crossed in that moment, for better or for worse,” D’Arcy, 34, told PEOPLE of Rhaenyra beheading her late father’s best friend.

New episodes of House of the Dragon drop Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.