This Theory About Henry Golding's Character In 'Last Christmas' Is Heartbreaking

Ghosts certainly seem like more of a Halloween thing, but weirdly enough, they actually appear quite a lot in classic Christmas stories. And now, some movie fans think that the upcoming holiday movie Last Christmas may be adding to the creepy tradition. After the first trailer for the festive new Emilia Clarke movie dropped, a lot of viewers picked up on some weirdness surrounding Henry Golding's character Tom. Now the big question fans have about the movie is if Tom is dead in Last Christmas. It sounds like a wild theory at first, but it actually has some merits to it.

In Last Christmas, Clarke stars as Kate, a down-on-her-luck woman working as an elf at a Christmas store, who sparks a romance with a kind and supportive stranger named Tom (Golding). The trailer for the movie feels like your run-of-the-mill, cookie-cutter Christmas love story (albeit with some very big names) upon first glance, but a closer look at the trailers seems to reveal something strange about Tom. He only ever appears in scenes with Kate, and is never shown talking to anybody else. On top of that, he seems solely devoted to helping her out, even though he apparently just randomly bumped into her on the street. Things get weirder when Kate points out that Tom seems to randomly disappear and then suddenly reappear in her life.

The final piece of the puzzle comes when Kate reveals she recently had a near-death experience that landed her in the hospital. Adding up all these moments, viewers have come up with the theory that Tom was the person who saved Kate's life, is now dead, and is a spirit hoping to help her make the most of the life that he gave to her.

That's right — Last Christmas could very well be a hyper-literal interpretation of the 1984 Wham! song of the same name, in which George Michael sings "Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away." If the movie is taking this route, Tom may have been a heart donor who ended up saving Kate's life when she was in need of a transplant — as in literally giving her his heart — and Kate may be figuratively "giving it away" by not living her life to its fullest potential.

Honestly, the theory sounds pretty convincing. But director Paul Feig has actually categorically denied that this theory is true. He told RadioTimes that Tom is indeed alive in the film and said viewers are totally overthinking the plot:

Anything anybody thinks they know about this movie is not correct. It makes me laugh because it’s this romantic comedy and then everyone is treating it like it’s The Matrix. It’s just a lovely Christmas movie!

Then again, Feig wouldn't just come out and spoil his entire movie if people happened to guess the twist, now would he? It's really is hard to deny how convincing the Tom theory is after watching that trailer and putting it together with the song that inspired the title of the movie, so maybe Feig was just trying to protect the twist for fans who want to be surprised. Whatever the case, the only way to be sure if this theory is true or not will be to see Last Christmas when it arrives in theaters on Nov. 8.