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The CW’s Dynasty: Which Cristal Is Best?

Over the course of The CW’s Dynasty reboot, which has just begun Season 5, three women have taken up the mantle as the glamorous Cristal Flores, the much younger wife of patriarch Blake Carrington (Grant Show). Though there have been three different actors, only two different Cristals have appeared one the show — one played by Nathalie Kelley, who met her devastating end in the Season 1 finale, and the other is played by both Ana Brenda Contreras and Daniella Alonso. This has been quite a show of its own for viewers to watch, as the revolving door of Cristals changed so many dynamics over the first three seasons. It was quite a shock to not have another woman taking the mantle before Dynasty Season 4.

During their respective time, all three women have had their own interpretations, making the current Cristal Carrington that was recast ahead of Season 3 feel like two separate characters. We’ve taken the liberty of comparing the women based on a number of factors — like how she fits into the family, her relationship with Blake, and her other endeavors among other things — and ranked them from least to most entertaining.

(For the sake of this piece, we’re pretending Contreras’ Cristal is a different character than Alonso’s Cristal because let’s be real, it has always felt like it.)

3. Ana Brenda Contreras in Season 2


dynasty ana brenda contreras grant show
Image via The CW

In third place is the Cristal Jennings from Dynasty Season 2 that stole Blake’s heart shortly after the death of… well, the fake Cristal. The woman that stole Blake away from his pain, brought him down to the real world on several occasions and had a better understanding of the kind of man that Blake is. Contreras, while doing an excellent job of separating her performance from Kelley’s, didn’t bring enough to the table to make viewers not feel the loss of the original, which is partially on the writers. During the season, Cristal felt very separate from everything and everyone else, which was a little unsettling. It took a while to see how she fit in with the rest of the Carrington family, and then the season was over and she was gone.

She did have a much better (or, at least, more civilized) relationship with Fallon (Elizabeth Gillies) than the others, but her other relationships fell flat or were altogether non-existent. As a standalone character, Season 2 Cristal started off strong before slowly fading into the background. Even the loss of her unborn child and the death of her ex-husband, executed in the most brutal way possible, didn’t bring much to the character, and the reaction she had was underwhelming. Cristal could barely (if at all) stand on her own without Blake by her side on-screen, making it hard to care for the character, something that already would have been difficult considering how the original Cristal made her way into viewers’ hearts.

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2. Daniella Alonso in Season 3 and on…


dynasty daniella alonso grant show
Image via The CW

Of the three Cristals, Alonso’s variation of the character is, without a doubt, the woman most suited for Blake Carrington. She is the most comfortable with Blake’s shady actions, business and otherwise, even often becoming an active participant in his devious schemes. This Cristal is the most comfortable in the criminal world, as she has now taken over her father’s business, which is quite corrupt and could only be run by someone willing to justify their actions in the same way that Blake and her father do. A big part of the third season was their separation and seeking comfort in others outside of the marital bed, which seemed to strengthen their relationship and Cristal as a standalone character.

They came back together, and Cristal was more willing to stand up to Blake and have her voice heard, seeking to escape the shadows that her father and brother had condemned her to from an early age. Alonso’s version of Cristal definitely has an advantage, considering she is the only one to last more than one season. If I were basing this on Season 3 alone, she’d be at the bottom. At first, it was rather off-putting to see how much Cristal changed with the recast, and her story was chained to Blake and his pending criminal charges. Not much excitement or room for growth there, not even from her affair with a man of the cloth.

A lot of Cristal’s growth came from Dynasty Season 4, as she struggled with a brain tumor and gained control of the Flores business. Additionally, she was finally allowed to interact with characters other than Blake on a semi-regular basis, like with her step-son Adam (Sam Underwood) as he was the sole person to know of her health troubles for quite a while. She also developed an interesting friendship with Sam (Rafael de la Fuente) in the latter half of the season, as she played an instrumental role in making sure Sam knew he was part of the Carrington family whether he was married to Steven (James Mackay) or not. While the relationships with other characters are coming along as she sticks around, the progress is rather slow. At the very least, she’s mostly on the same page as Blake, which keeps any unnecessary marital problems at bay and makes their relationship feel equalized. She now feels like a character capable of taking on her own stories, as we will likely see in the new season, and has achieved some level of interest from viewers as a standalone character. But, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done before she can top our number one pick.


1. Nathalie Kelley in Season 1


dynasty grant show nathalie kelley
Image via The CW

Though she appeared in only 22-episodes and met a devastating end, the original Cristal Flores (a.k.a. Celia Machado) was such a strong character from the very first moment of the inaugural season. She was developed as one of the leading characters, and that was truly felt throughout her stint on the show. She stood her ground amidst the chaos that often involved Fallon and Blake, thrust into a world that she was completely unfamiliar with. It’s arguable that she was the most developed character behind Fallon, which is definitely not something that we have seen with the other Cristal(s). Her world before the Carrington life was thoroughly explored, and not just because her nephew Sam made his way into her new life too. She had relationships with all of the main characters on the show, whatever those may be.

Of the three, this Cristal was the least compatible with Blake… which turned out to be a good thing in some ways, not so good in others Aside from Steven, she was the character most concerned with morality, which is perhaps why it’s best that she didn’t stick around. Forcing a relationship between Cristal and Blake would have come at her expense, as she would’ve been forced to change on a base level and begin accepting his terrible actions without question. But, this divide with Blake brought her closer to some of the other characters, like Steven and Sam. The differences between Blake and Cristal became too apparent that it seemed that the writers wrote themselves into a corner with Cristal before her untimely death. Since the death of the original Cristal, the others have felt so isolated, which is so disheartening because there’s quite a bit of potential.

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Additionally, the rivalry Cristal had with Fallon was one of the most entertaining aspects of the show. That has been dearly missed since her death, as nobody can quite mess with Fallon in the same way. They kept each other on their toes, pushing the other to be and do better, causing them to get themselves into some wacky situations. And, this Cristal and Alexis (then played by Nicollette Sheridan) actually interacted with each other and had very tense relations as the two women in Blake’s life, leading to some incredibly satisfying content in this Cristal’s final episodes.

Overall, it seems to be for the best that she died, but she remains the most enjoyable Cristal of the three. The differences between her and Blake made their marriage a bit unbelievable, but simultaneously made her a character worth rooting for, and brought her closer to other characters on the show. Cristal’s motives — business and otherwise — were almost always much purer (when she wasn’t just being petty), making her easy to empathize with and understand in a way that is only similar to how viewers do with Liam (Adam Huber) at this point.

She could always stand on her own as a character in this world, something many Dynasty characters could not do for quite a while. Honestly, she could have led the show if the writers had wanted to go down that path.

All four seasons of Dynasty are streaming on Netflix.


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