- 28 Years Later plot theories are being shared online
- Many are keen to discover what happened to Cillian Murphy’s Jim
- Danny Boyle’s sequel hits cinemas in June 2025
28 Years Later has got the internet talking, with many convinced they’ve cracked elements of the sequel’s plot.
Danny Boyle’s follow-up to his 2002 original, 28 Days Later, launched its first trailer earlier this month and it wasted no time in creeping everyone out. Set to a tense Rudyard Kipling poem that slowly rises to a terrifying crescendo, the short teaser sets the scene for a return to a world ravaged by the Rage virus.
Read more: What is the audio in the 28 Years Later trailer?
Now, fans have started dissecting the trailer and looking for clues as to what might happen in Boyle’s new movie. Many are so convinced that they’ve unpicked key elements that they’ve taken to Reddit to share the biggest 28 Years later plot theories.
What are these plot theories? Well, we’ve gathered together some of the internet’s key ponderings to see what they can tell us about the potential future of Boyle’s bloodthirsty zombie franchise.
28 Years Later plot theories
“Jimmy” is a new key character
Many 28 Years Later plot theories revolve around someone called “Jimmy”. This mysterious name can be heard and seen a number of times throughout the trailer. The first is in its opening scene. This is a flashback to the early days of the virus outbreak and shows a panicked mother running into her front room to find a group of children watching the Teletubbies. She refers to one of them as “Jimmy.”
Later, we see the same name etched onto a brick church wall alongside the ominous phrase “Behold, he is coming with the clouds.” Finally, “Jimmy” can also be seen scratched into the body of an infected person hanging upside down.
While the name certainly connects to Cillian Murphy’s 28 Days Later survivor Jim, many have theorised that it could be a completely new character. Some have suggested it could be a grown-up version of the young boy glimpsed at the start of the trailer.
“I don’t believe this is referencing OG Jim, but instead the boy Jimmy from the intro,” said one Reddit user. “Possibly giving us a character who survived the outbreak as a child and grew up and survived under the worst conditions of Infected England for 28 years.”
The “Giant Man” could be a new villain
Others were quick to spot a large figure in the trailer that they have labelled the “Giant man”. These plot theories suggest that this huge person could be Jimmy – someone who has been forced to grow up in an infected, terror-strewn world and adapt accordingly.
“The long haired “Giant Man” is possibly Jimmy,” suggested someone on Reddit. “Not an evolved infected. But a feral man who learned how to mask himself around the infected or at least direct the violence of the infected.”
Meanwhile, others have suggested this imposing character could be a new leader of the infected, one that has evolved alongside the virus itself. “A more tin foil hat theory is that this evolution of the virus has seen a leader of sorts for the infected rise up, (that big dude in the trailer maybe?) and lead/control them,” said another on Reddit.
“Maybe this evolution has seen them change what their bodies need to survive.”
The infected are being weaponised
Another popular theory is that those infected by the Rage virus are being weaponised by the military or the government. Soldiers featured briefly in the 28 Years Later trailer have been used to support this idea.
Even in 28 Days Later we saw how military leader Major West (Christopher Eccleston) had started using the infected for his own means, keeping one unfortunate character in chains so they could observe their viral developments.
Perhaps the military has continued to have a presence in the 28 Days Later world and is using survivors to monitor how the infection evolves in 28 Years Later? It’s something some Reddit users have pondered over since the trailer first landed.
“My theory is someone is using zombies as weapons,” said someone on Reddit. “They do this by having infected blood in storage (that tied up upside down infected) and use it to infect prisoners.”
“Zombie Jim” is a dream sequence
While many things are still up in the air, one thing we know for sure is that the skeletal figure seen rising up from a field in the trailer isn’t the return of Murphy’s survivor Jim. Almost as soon as the 28 Years Later trailer dropped, many were quick to believe that this was our first glimpse at the character’s return. However, shortly after it was confirmed that this zombie wasn’t Murphy at all but a friend of Boyle’s who had secured a guest role in the sequel.
“That emaciated infected is not Jim aka Cillian Murphy. To think they would reveal a characters fate in the first trailer for a sequel by a team that has returned to the story after 22 years is.. fanciful at best,” said one fan.
Other Redditers added: “I don’t think that’s truly him rising up in that scene in the trailer. Either it’s a dream sequence or someone that just looks like him. I wouldn’t be surprised if the makers of the movies have put some red herrings to throw us off the scent.”
Meanwhile, some have made comparisons to Jim and the ominous masked figure glimpsed briefly in the movie’s trailer. “One interesting moment is the person in the mask,” said another viewer. “They lean forward in almost the exact way the skeletal person does (that everyone thinks is Murphy) and the mask resembles their face.”
Could this masked figure be Jim or has Jim become someone worthy of worship? Looks like we’ll have to wait for 28 Years Later to arrive before we find out for sure.
