Gather around, my fellow Swifties, because episodes 3 and 4 of The End of an Era have officially dropped on Disney+ this morning, and we’re already more than halfway through with the Eras tour docuseries.
I don’t know about you, but my brain is still doing cartwheels processing all the things we learned in these last two episodes. Whether you’ve already seen them and want to debrief, or you’re just here for the tea, let’s get into it. Here are 14 moments from The End of an Era episodes 3 and 4 that fans can’t stop talking about:
1.
We finally got our answer as to why Taylor wore the red bodysuit for Reputation — the only era in the show without a different wardrobe option — for 131 straight shows. As it turned out, there was no more of the fabric used for the original suit anywhere in the world, so it had to be recreated for the gold bodysuit, which seemingly caused delays and complications when it came to getting it to look and fit just right.
2.
Taylor’s mom, Andrea, encouraged Taylor to meet up with Travis after hearing about his friendship bracelet story online. Taylor had always been very against dating an athlete because she wasn’t one herself, but Andrea told her, “You gotta start doing something different.”
3.
Taylor revealed that, on their first date, Travis had to explain football to her like it was “high-speed, violent chess,” and then she became obsessed with him and football, which she called the “greatest surprise of [her] life.”
4.
Every outfit change on the tour was 1 minute and 15 seconds or less, with the shortest being 39 seconds total. According to her stylist, she had 20 total quick changes throughout the whole show. They pulled it off by having two designated dressers for Taylor and creating four changing rooms on various floors of the stage, which she moved to and from on a pulley system manned by her crew. The whole thing had to be very choreographed to work night after night.
5.
If you were following along with the tour online, odds are you recall “HandGate,” when fans noticed a chunk missing from Taylor’s palm in the middle of the show one evening. Taylor recounted running to change out of her Evermore dress under the stage and tripping over the hem of it, busting her knee and skidding the palm of her hand off in the process. Blood was gushing from her hand in the quick-change room while she changed into her Rep suit, and when she ripped off the skin hanging off of it…it gushed even more.
6.
We also got a big look into how she trained physically for the three-and-a-half-hour tour, with her longest prior to Eras being two hours and fifteen minutes. She revealed that, for six months, she would run on the treadmill every day at the tempo of the songs she was playing, while simultaneously singing it out loud. In total, she ran about eight miles during every show, with the 1989 and Rep sets having the most cardio.
7.
Taylor spoke on there being a time where the tour was the thing that was keeping her going, and that her personal life was actually more difficult than work, saying, “I went through two breakups on the first half of this tour, and that’s a lot of breakups, actually. The show was what gave me purpose, and what I could use to get out of bed. The tour has never been the hard thing in my life.”
8.
In the docuseries, we see Taylor recording songs for The Tortured Poets Department, which she described as a “purge” of everything bad that happened in the previous two years and her “feeling like [she’s] not a person” but “just this, like, big conglomerate that no one sees as a real human being, and, like, especially not men that [she] date[s].”
9.
Some eagle-eyed fans pieced together that Taylor recorded “Fortnight” on May 22, 2023, based on the outfit she wore in the docuseries that day and pictures of her entering Electric Lady Studios in NYC way back when. There has long been discourse among Swifties about which muse the song is about, with many assuming it was about Matty Healy from its lyrics. This timeline gives us a bit more information to sleuth with, leading many to the conclusion that the song might actually be about Joe Alwyn, who she publicly separated with the month prior.
10.
Taylor spoke about not overthinking gender on the tour, calling it “one of the most fun things about how [we] approached” it. “We’ve got guys in heels and leotards and stuff, and we just don’t really think too hard about it,” she began, additionally citing how men and women were dressed in her iconic tour outfits in “Look What You Made Me Do”. When asked if one of her dancers, Whyley, could fulfill his dream of performing in “Ready For It?” — a number in the show that was all-female — she watched a video of his performance and immediately approved it, saying, “Yes, 100%.”
11.
To prepare for the acoustic set, Taylor rehearses her mashups ahead of time in the dressing room — generally, it seems in front of her parents — so they are “purposeful and well-executed.” It appears as though she’s also very intentional with the narrative her song combinations tell. For instance, in the docuseries, she mashes up “Hits Different” from Midnights with “Welcome to New York” from 1989, which, to her, tells a story of someone going through a horrific breakup they can’t get over and moving to a big city to find a new sense of purpose in themself.
12.
Travis’s involvement in the “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” skit came about from the two of them joking about him being in it, and Taylor suddenly realizing it was “very clear that he wasn’t joking” about joining her on stage.
13.
Taylor revealed that historically, maintaining relationships when she’s on tour has always been particularly difficult, and she always felt like the tour took away from her ability to nourish them. That dynamic really shifted when she started dating Travis, as they have very similar, demanding jobs, and he was not only okay with her “big life,” but seemingly thrived in it.
14.
And finally, before Sabrina Carpenter agreed to be an acoustic set guest in New Orleans, she had actually requested to come and watch the show with some of her friends on her night off from her own Short ‘n Sweet tour. Taylor checked Sabrina’s tour schedule, saw that she wasn’t performing that night, and invited her to join, creating a mash-up of Sabrina’s smash hit “Espresso” with her own, “Is It Over Now?” and closed it out with “Please, Please, Please.”
That’s all for this week, folks. What did you think of these two episodes? Is there anything you’re reallllllly hoping we get a peek at in the final two next week? Let us know your takes in the comments below!