Did 28 Years Later retcon 28 Weeks Later?

If you’ve just come out of 28 Years Later and have found this article, let me just say — are you okay? Deep breaths, bud.

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland have reunited to resurrect the zombie thriller franchise they began in 2002 with 28 Days Later. And Mashable’s Shannon Connellan proclaimed this sensational sequel “a triumphant return and one of the scariest movies of the year.”

So, if you’re in a cold sweat, know you’re not alone! But perhaps as the fog of fear and excitement subsides, you might begin wondering about the movie’s ending, what it has to do with the Teletubbies, or even if this is a sequel to 28 Weeks Later at all.

Let’s dive into the last question with some help from Boyle himself, who was a guest on Mashable’s interview podcast, Say More. He explained how this film relates to its predecessor, and how 28 Years Later is the start of its own spinoff trilogy.

Be warned: Some spoilers for 28 Years Later lie ahead.

Has the Rage Virus spread worldwide in 28 Years Later?

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams run across water in “28 Years Later.”
Credit: Sony

If you need a refresher on 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, we’ve got you covered. But broad strokes: Global spread of the virus was a rumor Jim heard in the first film. Then, in the second, it was confirmed with the climactic image of the infected around the Eiffel Tower. However, 28 Years Later’s introduction reveals the virus has been battled back and exists solely on the island that harbors the United Kingdom’s England, Wales, and Scotland. The United Kingdom was seen as a lost cause by the international community and determined to be a quarantine zone, from which no one was allowed to escape.

In 28 Years Later, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) learns from his mentor/father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) that international patrol boats circle the island to ensure no one escapes. The lights of their ships can be spotted at night. Spike will actually meet a Navy soldier whose surveillance mission went horribly awry. His appearance, conversation, and iPhone confirms the world beyond the UK is thriving without fear of the Rage Virus. Everyone on the island — living or undead — was left for dead.

What happened to the cure proposed in 28 Weeks Later?

Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes muse in “28 Years Later.”
Credit: Sony

Another setup from the 2007 sequel that’s been dropped is the potential of a cure coming from the Harris family.

In Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later, mum Alice (Catherine McCormack) and her son Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton) are carriers but asymptomatic, meaning they can pass on the virus but aren’t rampaging zombies. Alice proves to be the source of the sequel’s outbreak action. But before all infected hell breaks loose, she was floated as a source for a cure (think The Last of Us). It’s possible that Andy surviving might have been how the virus was beat back internationally. Perhaps they did create a cure from his blood! But there’s no mention of it in 28 Years Later.

Danny Boyle didn’t take the expected path from 28 Weeks Later to 28 Years Later.

Danny Boyle directs Jodie Comer in “28 Years Later.”
Credit: Sony

Boyle visited Mashable’s studios as a guest of Say More, our interview podcast. Speaking with myself, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko, he shared how he and Alex Garland returned to their post-apocalyptic world because they’d found an angle that excited them. But he noted it veered away from Fresnadillo’s 2007 sequel, which he and Garland executive-produced but did not helm or write.

In the episode of Say More, Boyle described the ending of 28 Weeks Later, with the virus spreading wide, as “the traditional route” of such a story. “[Garland and I] sort of counterintuitively decided to do the opposite,” he said of 28 Years Later. “We imagine that the EU or the UN had forced the virus back into the UK, because it was very easy landscape to blockade and quarantine, and we thought, that’s the setting.” 

Confining the virus back to the UK, “put a restriction” on the creative team, giving them a place to build fresh. Of Garland’s approach to the script, Boyle said, “He wrote this epic story, which is across three films… It’s a much bigger idea than if we’d gone large-scale [with the virus], across Europe and into Russia, or whatever people were imagining that we might do with it.”

So, did Boyle and Garland dump the plotline from Fresnadillo’s sequel?

Yes and no. Within the world of 28 Years Later, those events could have occurred. But they don’t play a significant role in 28 Years Later — at least not yet.

Subsequent films in this branching trilogy could bring these previous threads back into the fold. As Boyle himself teased in his interview with Mashable, a curious new player comes onto the scene in the finale of 28 Years Later, one who could bring a dramatic shift to the story and the fate of this family. 

From Aaron Taylor-Johnson to Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, Boyle said 28 Years Later is “populated with British actors entirely — other than one guy who turns up, which I won’t tell you about. It’s quite well worth looking forward to that bit later on, [to see] who turns up from somewhere else.” 

To uncover this mystery, see 28 Years Later and look out for our ending explainer. 

28 Years Later is now playing in theaters.