28 Years Later fans make horrifying realisation about insane Jimmy Savile ending

The new sequel to 28 Days Later, titled 28 Years Later, has been making headlines worldwide for its bizarre ending, which involves Jimmy Savile.

28 Years Later has been highly anticipated, debuting with a worldwide opening of $60 million and being widely praised by critics as one of the best films of the year.

There's been a few questions about the film has since cleared up, including how the Sycamore Gap tree made an appearance, and whether a titular character for 28 Days Later will also be showing up.

Much of the discourse surrounding the film, however, has been dominated by the very final two minutes of the entire movie.

Spoilers ahead for the ending to 28 Years Later.

The film concludes with Spike, played by Alfie Williams, fleeing his home on Holy Island with his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

After being cornered by infected and trapped, a gang of young people led by Sinner's Jack O'Connell show up – 'The Jimmies'.

All of them, led by O’Connell’s Sir Jimmy Crystal, are dressed up like Jimmy Savile in blonde wigs, flashy jewellery and multi-coloured tracksuits.

Whilst many have been focusing on why this scene was put in the film, this has been answered by director Danny Boyle.

Eagle eyed fans, however, have noticed something about the Jimmy Savile centric ending that makes the decision to have their gang be inspired by the famous child sexual abuser somehow even more horrifying.

He is known now to be a horrific sexual abuser, but Savile was once a respected TV presenter known for his charity, something which may play a key secret role in the ending (Evening Standard via Getty Images)

28 Years Later is of course a sequel to 28 Days Later, which came out in 2002. This means that, in the world of the films, the outbreak is largely accepted to have happened around 2002, give or take a few years in either direction.

Whichever exact year you pick, this means that the film is set several years prior to the infamous TV presenters’ death.

Whilst Garland and Boyle are, of course, not crazy enough as to suggest that Savile would appear in the upcoming sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple it does mean one very important thing.

The revelations of Savile’s prolific child sexual abuse, which came to light after his death, would not have been known to the public in this universe.

Some fans have put these dots together and made the horrifying realisation that the gang may not be doing some sick and perverted tribute to Savile, but a tribute to him as a children’s TV presenter as he was known pre-death.

One thread on Reddit discussing the ending saw someone say they were bother by the depiction of Savile, leading one commenter to respond saying: "Definitely. Which is actually a really interesting addition because in this universe, it is likely that his dark past was never unearthed due to the apocalypse decimating the UK."

The film's sequel is already filmed (Sony)

Though he wasn’t the most popular figure on children’s TV in 2002, the expectation is that they may have found old VHS tapes or recordings of him that the gang ‘The Jimmies’ based themselves on.

This fits into Boyle’s comments regarding the role of the Jimmies gang in the upcoming sequel, which are set to be a major player in Bone Temple.

He said in an interview with Business Insider: "It's all kind of twisting in this partial remembrance, clinging onto things and then recreating them as an image for followers."

He pointed in another interview to how the Queen is the portrait placed in the social club on Holy Island, with both contributing to the idea that a zombie outbreak would crystallise culture exactly how it was when the outbreak began.

All in all, the upcoming 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple being set to feature the Jimmies in a major role will make it an uncomfortable watch for viewers – which most likely is the intention behind it.

28 Years Later is available to watch in cinemas now.