Spartacus: House of Ashur episode 8 reveals the most distressing gladiator death in the Starz show to date — and its cast 'felt completely shaken' after filming

Even I had a tear or two in my eye

23 Jan 2026, 14:00 · TechRadar

Features By Jasmine Valentine published 23 January 2026

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WARNING: spoilers for Spartacus: House of Ashur episode 8 ahead.

Spartacus: House of Ashur might technically be ancient history, but I don't know whether I'm coming or going from week to week. I'd just got my head around the Brothers Ferox being behind Opiter's (Arlo Gibson) death in episode 6, before Satyrus (Leigh Gill) is the only one left alive in episode 7... but we've moved on at lightning speed.

In Spartacus: House of Ashur episode 8, the main focus has shifted. Ashur (Nick E. Tarabay) is upsetting every woman around him because of his blossoming feelings for Viridia (India Shaw-Smith), and Achillia (Tenika Davis) is slowly on her way back to full strength. However, it's Celadus (Dan Hamill) and Tarchon (Jordi Webber) who you need to be keeping an eye on.

While Tarchon feels threatened by Achillia and seeks to ruin her return to glory, Celadus severs the pair's bond once he gets wind of Tarchon's behavior. The two then have to enter the gladiator arena at the end of episode 8, and only one of them leaves alive.

For Hamill and Webber, it was a monumental episode in completely different ways. But for one star, their fictional death was "really hard and a little traumatic" to process.

Celadus' shock death in Spartacus: House of Ashur episode 8 'didn't require any acting techniques whatsoever'

Spartacus: House of Ashur | Official Green Band Trailer | STARZ - YouTube

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"I'm not gonna lie about this... it sucked," Hamill explained about filming Celadus' death. "It was really hard and a little bit traumatic. I had to convince my nervous system that I was done. There's a lot of different acting techniques, but for this one, we didn't need any. We could flick into these people's time and space, and so it was real. So I felt a bit shook after.

"It's really tricky to make your nervous system feel like it's going to die. But to be fair, there's a lot of pressure on this thing. We're honoring a legacy, and to do it half-hearted, we'd kick ourselves. It's also a pleasure to be able to access those things and to do it in an arena with 350 people. This is the biggest physical flex we've ever had, but we also had to be emotional athletes.

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