Honestly, if you spent any time watching The Affair on Showtime, you probably walked away with a bit of a crush on Cole Lockhart. Or at least a profound sense of pity. While Noah Solloway was busy being the world’s most self-indulgent novelist, Cole was back in Montauk, essentially becoming the human embodiment of a bruised soul. He wasn't just a side character in a show about cheating. He was the gravity.
Joshua Jackson played him with this specific kind of rugged, quiet desperation that made you want to buy him a beer and tell him everything would be okay, even though you knew it wouldn't.
Why Cole Lockhart Still Matters
The thing about Cole in The Affair is that he was the only one who actually lost something real before the show even started. Everyone else was bored. Noah was bored with his successful life. Alison was drowning in grief, sure, but Cole was trying to hold up the ceiling while the house was literally on fire. He was the "legacy" character. The Lockhart family had roots in Montauk that went back generations, and they were mostly rotten roots involving drug running and bad tempers.
But Cole wanted to be different. He wanted the ranch. He wanted the life he’d planned before their son, Gabriel, died.
You’ve gotta realize that Cole's entire identity was tied to being a husband and a father. When Gabriel drowned, Cole didn't just lose a child; he lost his compass. Then Alison leaves him for a guy who wears V-neck sweaters and lives in Brooklyn. It’s brutal. Most viewers saw Cole as the "good guy" compared to Noah, but that’s a bit of a simplification. He was incredibly stubborn. He could be mean. He was stuck in a past that didn't exist anymore.
The Problem With the "Hero" Narrative
We like to label characters. We call Noah the villain and Cole the hero.
It’s not that simple.
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Remember the scene in season one where Cole finds out about the affair and basically loses his mind? He doesn't just get sad. He gets dangerous. There’s that moment at the ranch with the gun—it's terrifying. He was a man who felt like the world owed him some peace after everything he’d been through, and when he didn't get it, he lashed out.
But then season two happened.
The show opened up his perspective, and suddenly we saw why he was the way he was. He was carrying the weight of his brothers—especially the self-destructive Scotty—and trying to keep a failing business afloat. He was the "adult" in a family of children.
Did Cole ever actually move on?
Basically, no. Even when he married Luisa, it felt like a consolation prize.
Don't get me wrong, Luisa was a powerhouse. She was probably "better" for him in a practical sense. She was stable, she worked hard, and she loved his daughter, Joanie. But Cole was a ghost hunter. He spent the middle seasons of the show looking for Alison even when she was standing right in front of him.
The chemistry between Joshua Jackson and Ruth Wilson was so thick you could barely see through it. It made his marriage to Luisa feel like a lie, which was kinda heartbreaking for Luisa. She knew. She always knew she was the second choice.
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What happened to Cole in the end?
A lot of fans were pretty annoyed that Joshua Jackson didn't show up for the final season. It felt like a hole in the story. After Alison’s death in season four—which was a whole other level of trauma for him—Cole just... vanished from the screen.
We eventually find out his fate through Joanie’s eyes in the future timeline.
- He lived to be 74.
- He never really left Montauk.
- He died in 2053.
- He was buried next to his family, finally finding some version of the "roots" he spent his whole life protecting.
Seeing his gravestone in the finale was a weirdly quiet ending for such a loud character. He didn't die in some dramatic Lockhart-style explosion. He just got old. He lived through the climate change that was slowly swallowing Montauk and died a grumpy old man. There’s something sort of beautiful about that. He survived the affair, the murder trials, and the loss of the love of his life.
The Actionable Takeaway for Rewatching
If you're going back to watch the show again, pay attention to the clothes.
Seriously.
In Alison’s memory, Cole is often scarier or more "boring" than he is in his own. In Noah’s memory, Cole is a local thug. But in his own eyes, he’s just a guy trying to do the right thing and failing. That’s the brilliance of the show's structure. It reminds us that nobody is the "good guy" in someone else's story.
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If you want to understand the heart of the series, stop focusing on the cheating. Focus on the Lockhart ranch. Focus on the way Cole looks at the ocean. That’s where the real story is.
To get the most out of Cole in The Affair, watch the season two finale again. It’s the peak of his arc. It’s the moment where he realizes that he can’t save everyone, and he finally tries to save himself. It doesn’t quite work out—life rarely does—but it’s the most "human" he ever gets.
Next time you're looking for a deep character study, skip the flashy stuff and just watch Joshua Jackson’s face in the background of the Lobster Roll scenes. He’s doing more work with a grimace than most actors do with a monologue.
Check out the official Showtime summaries or the various actor interviews from 2022 where Jackson admits he wouldn't play the role today because being a father in real life makes the Gabriel storyline too painful to touch. That tells you everything you need to know about the emotional depth required for the part.
Stay with the Lockhart story. It’s the only one that actually pays off.