Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for 28 Years Later.

The infected have returned to the big screen, and the world of 28 Years Later will never be the same. The Danny Boyle-directed threequel, two decades in the making, takes audiences to a quarantined island off the coast of the United Kingdom inhabited by a community of less-than-stable survivors, largely captained by Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie.

Jamie’s antics, while championed by his community, isolate him from his family. He grows distant from his dying wife Isla (Jodie Comer) and inadvertently pushes himself away from their son Spike (Alfie Williams).

ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley spoke with Taylor-Johnson, Comer, and Williams in spoiler-filled detail to dissect their characters’ respective reactions to 28 Years Later‘s shock ending. Crowley also chatted with Boyle and writer Alex Garland to fill in the gaps regarding the arrival of Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) and what’s coming for Cillian Murphy in the sequel.

Jodie Comer Explains Why Isla Willingly Meets Her End So Suddenly

“There is a real kind of insatiable desire for it to end…”

Death comes in many forms in the post-apocalyptic world. For Isla, hers is the result of an ᴀssisted suicide from Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) after he diagnoses her with cancer. When asked why she wanted to take her own life immediately after her diagnosis, Comer told ScreenRant that Isla had an “insatiable desire” to end her suffering.

“I think she’s so ready at that point,” Comer said. “I think if you’ve ever been around anyone with an illness of this kind or when someone’s gone through an extended period of suffering, I think there is a real kind of insatiable desire for it to end and be over. And I think-“

“It already hurts Spike. That’s why,” Williams added.

“She knows that he’s safe. There’s something that Kelson provides them in that moment, whether it be an outlook or a sense of safety and healing, that she feels she has to go,” Comer continued. Kelson’s unique view of death and his temple, made up of the bones of many who have succumbed to the Rage Virus, also seems to give Spike and Isla a sense of security in death, even if there’s an eeriness to the proceedings.

“It can almost appear quite selfish to be like, ‘Wow, how can you just leave?’ But it’s just come to that point for both of them where they’ve been through so much, and she is offered a way that’s much nicer than a lot of other possibilities.”

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Isla’s decision to go means she leaves her husband without saying goodbye. Jamie remains on the island during Spike and Isla’s exodus, unaware of his family’s whereabouts and intentions.

“I guess you don’t really get to see a sense of that, right?” Taylor-Johnson responded when asked about Jamie’s headspace during Spike’s solo trip. “I think there’s a lot of fear and guilt and a sense he’s lost control. He’s a character who very much feels like he’s in control, and he’s found a purpose on this island, on this Holy Island within this community. He’s a bit of a warrior, someone who goes out to the mainland. He’s very useful in what he does.”

Jamie is caught up to speed at the end of the film, as Spike drops off an infected’s uninfected child with a note at the island’s gate before heading back across the causeway back to the mainland before anyone notices.

“His son means everything to him and his wife does too, but he’s very much in denial of her condition and I think he maybe put a bit too much pressure and projected a lot onto his son,” Taylor-Johnson continued. “Once he loses control, he is in a place where he probably wants to somehow redeem that. I don’t want to give any spoilers [for the next movie], but I don’t know if he’s yet to get there in that bit because Spike goes on, and he takes the lead in what he needs to do for his mother.”

Jack O’Connell’s Jimmy Was Absent From Early Drafts

“‘That’s the most original bit of screenwriting I’ve seen since Clockwork Orange…'”

Spike taking the lead leads him to Sir Jimmy Crystal, a grown-up version of the child seen in the film’s cold open who is now leading an idiosyncratic gang of post-apocalyptic infected fighters with a very unique look.

“No,” Williams said emphatically when asked if Spike trusts Jimmy. “No. I mean, he doesn’t really have a choice, but no, not really. Not at all.” Jimmy, played by Jack O’Connell, bookends 28 Years Later and is set up to be a central force in next year’s follow-up, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. That said, the cryptic cult leader was not always a piece of the 28 Years Later puzzle.

“Jimmy didn’t appear until this incarnation,” Garland revealed. “There was a version that we worked on before [from] another writer who wrote a script, and then I did what was, in effect, a rewrite of that script. Jimmy didn’t feature in that story at all. There’s a sort of a trace, a bit of ancestry in a way, which is with some Swedish soldiers that wash up on the shores of quarantined Britain. But apart from that, there’s not really anything, until we meet Cillian anyway.”

While little is known about Jimmy’s lore at this time, Boyle teased that the character’s arc is one with historic parallels.“Cillian is obviously someone that we wait for in the trilogy, but Jimmy, when he did arrive, I remember reading it thinking, I’ll be honest with you, ‘That’s the most original bit of screenwriting I’ve seen since Clockwork Orange,'” Boyle added.

“Not that I read Clockwork Orange as a screenplay back in the day, but you look at films like screenplays. When you’re in business, you think [about] how it manifests itself. You’re drawn to certain writers and you love their work. I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, this is like Clockwork Orange. This is what it must have been like.'”

As for why a character like Jimmy found his way into the 28 Years Later script, Garland noted that it was to steer away from being “too generic.”

“This whole film structure came about as a result of abandoning a previous structure,” Garland continued. “We completely went down an avenue, we asked why the avenue was not right and reductively, the reason it wasn’t right was it was too generic. In a way, learning the danger of being generic was what freed us up to be, hopefully, a good deal, less generic and more subversive really.”

Cillian Murphy’s Jim Will Return In The Bone Temple

“A very surprising one nonetheless…”

The tip-toes around Cillian Murphy’s reprisal of Jim are turning into footsteps. Boyle first confirmed that the Academy Award winner would return in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple at ScreenRant‘s exclusive preview screening of 28 Years Later.

“I’ve obviously seen a rough cut of Nia DaCosta’s film, and he’s introduced beautifully at the coda of that film,” Boyle added, giving more context regarding Murphy’s return. “That obviously leads you in the way that you’ll probably realize that Jimmy is going to be a huge part of the second movie having been introduced at the end of the first movie. Likewise, Cillian will be a huge part of the third movie, having been introduced in what is, in effect, a coda to the second movie. A very surprising one nonetheless.”

The Bone Temple is in the can and is scheduled to hit theaters in January 2026. The future of the franchise beyond that remains unconfirmed, but Boyle and Garland have both confirmed they intend to return if the threequel gets greenlit.

“The idea would be I’d write, Danny would direct,” Garland said. “That’s the idea.”

“And that would cap off the 28 franchise?” Crowley asked.

“Until the prequels (laughs),” Garland responded.

“You just have got to help us raise the money,” Boyle added.

Source: ScreenRant Plus