The following story contains spoilers for 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, and the beginning of 28 Years Later.
WITHIN ITS FIRST few minutes, 28 Years Later makes one thing clear: The ending of 28 Weeks Later no longer matters.
The 2007 sequel famously ends with the movie’s zombie-like Infected making their way from England to Paris as they emerge from a subway station and onto the Place du Trocadéro, a tourist destination known for panoramic views of the Eiffel Tower. The implication seemed clear: the Infected had escaped containment in England, effectively guaranteeing the Rage Virus would spread across Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Except, apparently not. As an opening title card in 28 Years Later makes clear, while the Infected did briefly make their way to Europe, the rest of the world was able to drive them back, successfully quarantining the virus to the United Kingdom and Ireland. Beyond a few sparse sentences, the movie doesn’t explain how the rest of the world was able to keep the virus at bay. Did the French army successfully fight off a zombie invasion? Did they just nuke Paris and call it a day? We don’t know, but the answer may be hiding in plain sight.
A recently discovered in-universe website called Rage Leaks (the password is “mementomori”) seems to reveal more information. A page on the site reads: “The second wave reached Europe, and we pushed it back. The Atlantic Wall has held ever since.”
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later.
That appears to explain how 28 Years Later managed to undo the cliffhanger at the end of 28 Weeks Later—with brute force and vigilance—but there’s still one more question on this subject that needs answering.
The original 28 Days Later is very light on detail. We get to see how the Rage Virus first breaks containment from a scientific research facility, but that’s about it in terms of lore or canon. However, at one point early in the movie, Naomie Harris’s character, Selena, drops an interesting morsel of information.
“The day before the radio and TV stopped broadcasting, there were reports of infection in Paris and New York,” Selena says. “We didn’t hear anything more after that.”
The implication at the moment is clear: The entire world is already infected. However, we now know that’s not the case, and another scene in the film offers an explanation.
Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris in 28 Days Later.
Later in the original film, when our core cast arrives at an old mansion where a group of former military personnel have laid a trap for potential victims, one soldier offers the following theory:
“The rest of the world hasn’t even fucking stopped. Think about it! How could infection cross the oceans? How could it cross the mountains and the rivers? They stopped it. And right now TVs are playing and planes are flying in the sky and the world is continuing as fucking normal. Think. Actually think about it. What would you do with a diseased little island? They quarantined us.”
In the moment, those words are meant to be the ramblings of a lunatic who delivers them while handcuffed to a radiator in an impromptu prison cell. But in hindsight, it turns out that soldier was right. The world really did abandon England—it just took another two decades (and a couple of retcons) to finally make it all clear.
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Jake Kleinman is a critic and journalist whose writing has appeared in Inverse, The Ringer, Polygon, Mashable, Vice, Rolling Stone, Inc. Magazine, and more. You can follow him on Twitter/X @jacobkleinman.
