How old is Cole in My Life with the Walter Boys? The actor is over a decade older than the character
Netflix's Silver Falls High is staffed almost entirely by adults in their late twenties. Here's how old Cole Walter is supposed to be, how old Noah LaLonde actually is, and how the rest of the Walter household lines up.
Nobody on Netflix 's Colorado ranch is the age they're playing, and Cole is not even the worst offender. Do the arithmetic on the whole household and the numbers get genuinely strange.
Cole Walter is 17 in season 1 — a high school senior at Silver Falls High, fraternal twin to Danny, and the former starting quarterback whose football career ended with an injury before the show begins. Noah LaLonde, who plays him, was born March 22, 1998 in Macomb, Michigan. That made him 25 when season 1 dropped on December 7, 2023, and 28 by the time season 3 arrived on August 6, 2026. Against Cole's stated 17, that's a gap of eleven years.
The rest of the house is no better
The Walter brothers were cast almost uniformly a decade past their characters, which is standard practice for teen dramas — actors over 18 come without child labor restrictions, tutoring requirements, or capped shooting hours. What's unusual here is how consistent the gap is.
- Cole Walter, 17 — played by Noah LaLonde, 28. Eleven years.
- Danny Walter, 17 — played by Connor Stanhope, 28. Eleven years.
- Alex Walter, 16 — played by Ashby Gentry, born July 30, 1999, now 27. Eleven years.
- Nathan Walter, 15 — played by Corey Fogelmanis, 27. Twelve years.
- Will Walter, 26 — played by Johnny Link, 32. Six years, and the tightest fit in the cast.
Jackie Howard, the Manhattan transplant at the center of the show, is 16. Nikki Rodriguez has never publicly confirmed her date of birth, and reporting in 2026 by The Tab and Just Jared placed her around 34 — which would make her roughly double her character's age and the largest gap on the call sheet.
The show has never pretended otherwise. It simply doesn't discuss it.
What LaLonde did before Colorado
He was a hockey player first. LaLonde studied theater at Grand Valley State University while playing on the school's team, and before that skated in juniors for the Youngstown Phantoms and the Omaha Lancers. He started acting professionally in 2020 with short films, took a role as Rece in Asbury Park in 2021 and Wes in Deer Camp '86 in 2022, and appeared in Criminal Minds: Evolution the same year. Cole was the first part anyone recognized him from.
The athletic background is not incidental to the casting. Cole's entire arc in season 1 runs off a body that no longer does what it did — a quarterback with a wrecked knee, watching the position go to someone else.
Why it looks worse on this show than most
Two reasons. First, the series is shot in Alberta — Calgary, Cochrane and Crossfield — with a lot of outdoor daylight and very little of the soft-focus, artfully-lit high school corridor that hides an adult jawline. Second, the source material is a young-adult novel: Ali Novak's My Life with the Walter Boys, written on Wattpad and published in 2014, is explicitly a teen book, so the character ages are fixed and can't be quietly nudged upward.
Rotten Tomatoes scores have climbed each year regardless: 45% for season 1, 67% for season 2, and 83% for season 3.
Melanie Halsall developed and runs the series for Sony Pictures Television and iGeneration Studios. Season 2 landed August 28, 2025, season 3 on August 6, 2026, each with ten episodes, and Netflix renewed for a fourth season in May 2026 with a 2027 premiere.
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Which means LaLonde will be 29 or 30 when he next plays a Silver Falls student. For the record: Cole graduates during the run, so the gap technically narrows — by about two years, against eleven.
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