I’ve been a little off the radar recently. I was in Europe for a few months – with one wedding in Italy, another wedding near Barcelona, and lots of time spent catching up with family and friends scattered throughout the continent – but I did at least get the chance to catch 28 Years Later at the movies. And in the series’ ancestral home, too: London.

The 28 __ Later franchise is a super personal one for me.

I remember, as a kid, watching Days for the first time, after asking my parents to bring me back a bootleg copy from their trip to Thailand. (It was only after seeing the film again, many years later, that I realised its raw, grainy aesthetic wasn't down to my copy’s dubious provenance.) As for Weeks, it was one of the first films my surly 14-year-old self really anticipated with any great excitement – and I’ve already written about my relationship with Boyle and Garland’s franchise at some length in this piece on horror’s relationship with IP.

So of course, I was super excited for this one.

Yet despite being “off the grid” for a while, one thing I couldn’t miss was the online furore that met 28 Years Later’s release; the mixture of shock, confusion, anger, and outrage with which the online mob coalesced around one key part of 28 Years Later – its ending.

Did you love it? Did you hate it? Did you deplore it? Did you rate it?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments – but first, let’s unpack the ending of 28 Years Later in more detail.

28 Years Later ending explained

The ending of 28 Years Later sees Spike – disillusioned with the lies and philandering of his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and grieving the loss of his mother Isla (Jodie Comer) – leave the island village he grew up on and fend for himself on the British mainland.

In what’s almost the film’s final scene, Spike gets chased by a pack of Infected, and – despite his newfound skills with a bow and arrow – it looks like there might be too many for him to handle. Then – then, because this is the scene that’s caused so much of the above outrage and offence – a gang of mysterious blonde, tracksuit-clad warriors step in to help out.

The posse is led by Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) – whose name we’ve seen throughout the film scrawled, graffiti-like, in various places throughout the landscape of the mainland.

It’s also Jimmy’s name that’s etched into the skin of the murdered man Jamie and Spike come across earlier in the film. The man had been strung up by his ankles, with a bag pulled over his face and the name of the blonde troupe’s leader carved into his flesh – perhaps before he died – with a knife. Despite the cordiality with which Jimmy treats Spike in the film’s last scene, then, we’re primed to understand that, perhaps, this Jimmy character isn’t the best guy. So who is Jimmy? Well, we met him in the film’s opening scene, 28 years earlier.

28 Years Later: Who is Jimmy?

Played as a youngster by Rocco Haynes, Jimmy is one of the kids watching Teletubbies in the living room of his mother’s house when a gaggle of Infected attack. (And also the kid who, inadvertently, alerts the Infected to the children’s presence by calling his mum’s name – the Infected then proceed to butcher everyone in the room. Dammit, Jimmy!)

Jimmy escapes the bloodbath, before running to his father: a priest who has fled to the chapel nearby. After giving the boy his rosary (which the man still wears, 28 years on, upside down in a tribute to an individual we'll discuss in more detail shortly), Jimmy’s father’s zeal causes him to deliver himself to the Infected.

Jimmy survives, though, and that’s the last we see of him until Jack O’ Connell – an English actor who also played the big bad in 2025’s Sinners) – takes the stage at the end of the film.

The big question, then, is why has 28 Years Later's ending got people in such a tizzwazz?

I think the biggest issue was the perceived tonal clash between the more sombre, serious elements of the franchise – perhaps screenwriter Alex Garland’s influence – and the zany, almost ridiculous nature of the ending. When Jimmy’s gang step in to the handle the Infected pursuing Spike, they do so with all the gonzo, gleeful silliness of a karate B-movie from the 80s: cartwheeling, somersaulting, and leaping off rocks as they impale, slash at, and slice through the Infected with a mixture of spears and rope lassos. All this is accompanied by a heavy thrash metal track that, while it absolutely suits the action unfolding on the screen, perhaps feels at odds with the 110 minutes or so that preceded it.

For the record, I like the ending of 28 Years Later – and I know plenty of others that do – but I can also see why people hate it. I’d suggest that the schism in opinion here is rooted in culture. After all, the 28 ___ Later franchise is, at its heart, an English endeavour. The Americans stepped in for the sequel – with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s film adding more pulse-racing action scenes and expanding on the more modest scope of Boyle’s original – but that film was still set in the UK. And despite, the final scenes of 28 Weeks Later showing the Infected breaching Paris by way of the Channel Tunnel, the Rage Virus has always been – like tea, baked beans on toast, The Beatles, and battered fish – quintessentially British.

But before I come around to my final point, it’s important to discuss the elephant in the room of 28 Years Later’s ending, and the person whom the film’s Jimmy – and the gang he rolls with – model their style off: disgraced media personality Jimmy Savile. The movie Jimmy’s blonde, shoulder-length hair, velour tracksuits, and kitsch jewellery are all modelled off the real-life style of Savile. And, just in case you haven’t heard of him – again, this is where those outside Britain may not be as clued up – I’ll quickly recap who Savile was.

Basically, Savile was a hugely popular entertainer – a media personality, DJ, and TV star that was in EVERYTHING. It was only after his death in 2011 that hundreds of allegations of sexual misconduct came out against him, many involving children and older people. Well actually, it's not strictly true that these allegations only began to surface after Savile died, because many of the claims against Savile came out when he was still alive, and – horrifyingly – still working in the industry: where the nature of his work gave him access to the vulnerable populations he preferred to prey on most. Because of his status and importance (this guy was knighted, man), his victims’ claims were brushed under the rug: disbelieved, or simply dismissed, while he could continue perpetrating harm.

Is it controversial to give – albeit indirect – airtime to one of the most prolific and high-profile paedophiles in British history? This is another one of those lines along which the battle over the ending of 28 Years Later has taken place. Yes, I think you could argue that it is controversial, after which the questions that naturally follow are:

1. Is it worth it? And;

2. What’s the point, anyway?

For me, this ending works. Because Savile wasn’t publicly outed until well into the 2010s – and because the Rage Virus struck Britain around a decade before that – the news about Savile would never have come out. He would still have been idolised and adored by the survivors who remembered his antics (particularly those of Jimmy’s age, who were just kids when the world fell apart) trapping it in a kind of ‘time warp’, with all the UK’s cultural references frozen, in perpetuity, forever.

This, really, is what 28 Years Later is trying to do – lampoon the culture of the early 2000s, and suggest that the media of the time was stuck in its own kind of time warp. Boyle – whose quirkier style has always posed a nice counterpoint to Garland’s more serious style – is sending up the dangers of unexamined nostalgia; with Jimmy’s gang providing a disturbing symbol of selective cultural memory and its implications for future generations.

I mean, think of how many prominent actors and musicians (and, famously, one absolutely reprehensible studio boss) have been outed as sex offenders and abusers in recent years. If an apocalypse hit tomorrow, we’d never find out about their crimes. And just think, too – what will our culture of today, in 2025, look like in another 28 years’ time? How would audiences of 2053, taking a cross-section of our society today – not only what media we so voraciously consume, but how we do it – perceive it? How would they perceive us? It’s this ball Boyle and Garland are tossing around with 28 Years Later’s controversial ending; and for my money, the film’s fabric is all the richer for it.

Of course, 28 Years Later’s ending isn’t just there to provoke thought – it’s there for the far more practical purpose of setting up the sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. With Spike seemingly having fallen in with Jimmy’s unhinged cohort, Jamie determined to track down his son, and the fate of Ralph Fiennes’ Dr Ian Kelso still up in the air – not to mention the long-awaited re-appearance of Cillian Murphy’s Jim – the stage is well and truly set for Nia DaCosta’s follow-up, which hits theatres in January 2026. I can’t wait – can you?

Hungrier than a victim of the Rage Virus for more horror content? Check out my Weapons (2025) review, or my list of every kill in the Final Destination franchise: ranked. And, if you enjoyed this 28 Years Later ending explained, check out more similar content – such as Bring Her Back (2025) ending explained – right here on Talking Terror. Ciao for now!