Spoiler warning: Spoilers for the complete film.
Nels and White Bull survive the final confrontation, while Viking dies after their separate revenge plots collide. Cold Pursuit lets the two fathers leave together, then adds one more death to make their new understanding unstable.
How does Nels create a gang war?
His attacks on Viking’s organization are mistaken for action by White Bull’s rival group. Viking retaliates by killing White Bull’s son, giving the other father a personal reason to pursue him.
The conflict therefore grows through mistaken attribution. Nels acts alone, but his targets interpret the losses through the rivalry they already understand.
That mistake does not make Viking’s retaliation inevitable or blameless. It shows how readily a powerful man uses an assumed explanation to justify another killing.
Who ends the final confrontation?
Nels kidnaps Viking’s son Ryan to draw him out. At the snowplow business, White Bull’s arrival turns Viking’s planned ambush into a shootout. Nels blocks Viking’s escape, and White Bull shoots him.
Both bereaved men contribute to the outcome. Neither gets the exclusive revenge story in which he alone confronts the enemy and closes the account.
Ryan’s presence also complicates Nels’s role. A father pursuing the people who killed his child has made another child part of the means to reach them.
Why include the paragliding accident?
As Nels and White Bull drive away in the snowplow, Avalanche comes down into its path and dies. The accidental death interrupts the impression that the violence can be neatly concluded once Viking is gone.
It could create another grievance, but the film does not show a subsequent war. Predicting one as a confirmed outcome would overstate the final joke.
The ending instead leaves an uneasy partnership: two men who understand each other’s losses, still operating a vehicle that has just caused another one. Returning to work is possible for Nels. Returning to the untouched life he had before his son’s death is not.
Sources: official ending breakdown.