Christmas came early for Taylor Swift fans on Tuesday, December 23, with the early release of the last two episodes of her Disney+ docuseries, The End of an Era.
In the two-part finale, the Grammy winner, 36, opened up about what she wanted The Eras Tour to mean to her fans.
“I specifically created this tour on a molecular level to make people feel that sense of escape, but to have it land like that?” she said in episode 6, reflecting on the feeling that she succeeded in bringing that joy to attendees. “Every person in that audience hopefully is being shaped positively in some way by something that they see or something that they hear or something that they feel during [those] three and a half hours.”
Heading into the last few shows, however, the “Opalite” singer admitted she was looking forward to the chapter of her life that would come after the end of the tour.
“I’ve been holding my breath for a year and eight months just hoping that we’d be safe, we wouldn’t be injured, no harm would come to the tour,” she explained. “For me, it’s just overwhelming, just feeling thankful.”
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Swift wrapped The Eras Tour in December 2024 after 149 shows across 51 cities in five continents. It eventually became the highest-grossing tour of all time, grossing more than $2 billion.
All six episodes of Taylor Swift: The End of an Era are now streaming on Disney+. Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations from episodes 5 and 6:
Travis Kelce Loves Andrea Swift’s Cooking
During a quick exchange at the beginning of episode 5, Taylor Swift and her mom, Andrea Swift, discussed their imminent Thanksgiving plans — and Taylor had a special request from her then-boyfriend, Travis Kelce. (The duo got engaged in August.)
“Can you make those big ribs for Travis?” Taylor asked her mom, 67. “The ones he affectionately refers to as dinosaur bones.”
Andrea then quipped of her future son-in-law, “Texas-sized ribs for a Texas-sized man.”
In Her Family Era
Taylor spent much of episode 5 discussing how important it is to her that her family — mom Andrea, dad Scott Swift and brother Austin Swift — are there with her on tour. “Ultimately, I just don’t see any of this happening if all of my family hadn’t been involved,” Taylor explained in a confessional interview. “In an industry as cutthroat as the music industry, learning hard lessons and experiencing ups and downs and triumphs and failures, it was a huge challenge for my whole family, but everybody was so locked in for my whole life. They all banded together to be like, ‘No, she wants this, we want this for her.’”
Andrea, for her part, said it was an “honor” to work with her daughter on The Eras Tour, adding, “It’s a real privilege, and we know that. Because none of us would be doing anything that we’re really good at doing if it wasn’t for what she does that she’s incredibly good at doing. It’s incredible, fun, but mostly it’s a way for us to be together as a family and sort of honor this thing we’ve committed our entire lives to.”
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How Taylor Swift’s Grandma Influenced Her Career
As Swifties know, Taylor’s maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was a singer as well and served as the inspiration for the Evermore track named in her honor. In episode 5, Taylor’s mom, Andrea, explained that growing up with a professional opera singer helped prepare her for the career her daughter would eventually have.
“I don’t have a musical background or play instruments, but I do have this sort of intimate knowledge of the psyche of someone who really has to do this,” Andrea said, later revealing that her favorite part of the show is where Taylor appears at the very beginning of each concert. “That, to me, is absolutely worth everything. It makes me feel like this was my calling in my life. Whether it was Taylor or my mom, it was to be around someone who loves entertaining and is extraordinarily talented.”
Why Andrea Swift Doesn’t Like Hearing Music Early
In episode 5, Andrea quipped that she always gets to hear her daughter’s new songs before everyone else — but that’s not always the blessing it might appear to be.
“I usually hear about new music within five minutes of it being written,” she told the camera. “That is the best thing I can possibly think of and also the scariest, because now I know something that nobody else knows other than the people who were in that room. And that’s a massive responsibility. It’s like, ‘No, don’t send it to me. I don’t want it on my phone. No, no, no!’”
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The Idea Behind the ‘22’ Hat
In the years before The Eras Tour, Taylor was famous for her meet-and-greets, which had to stop after the coronavirus pandemic and because of the massive size of the Eras production. Despite that change, it was still important to Taylor that she have at least one special moment with an individual fan each night — which is how the now famous “22” hat came to be.
“I wanted to really bring back that moment … with a fan where I actually get close with them,” Taylor explained in episode 6 before revealing how the hat recipients were chosen. “I’ve got people in the audience scouring the crowd for the first couple of ‘eras’ trying to find a kid who knows every single word to the songs and is having the time of their life at this show, because that kid basically is like a representative of every kid in that crowd that night.”
While singing along with someone in front of 60,000 other people isn’t quite as intimate as a backstage meet-and-greet, Taylor said she was still able to feel close to her young fans in those moments. “Everything’s going on around us, and somehow we’re able to just have this moment be completely between us,” she recalled. “We’re just kind of like meeting each other, and everyone else disappears for a second. It just reminds me why I do it.”
What Taylor Swift Wants to Do Post-Tour
The End of an Era doesn’t address Taylor’s specific plans for life after The Eras Tour, but it’s clear she has little interest in mounting another project as massive right away. “I think that after this tour it would be nice to grow back some of the things that I’ve had to cut out of my life,” she explained in the final episode. “You just don’t have any energy for anything that seems optional. And so I’m interested in regaining some of that, because I know I used to have hobbies and, like, a personality outside of this tour. I can’t remember what they were. I’ll let you know.”
While it may be a while before another tour materializes, the “Anti-Hero” singer emphasized that the steady stream of music won’t stop. “Storytelling, for me, is one of the key aspects that makes me feel like life is worth living. It’s that important to me. And crafting a song is just the happiest I ever am,” she said in episode 5. “Songwriting happens whether I’m on tour or not. Because my life has just always been a kind of free-flowing state of, ‘You live it, you feel it, you wonder about it, you write about it.’”
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Taylor Swift’s Final ‘Eras Tour’ Huddle Speech
The last episode of the docuseries showed the emotional final speech Taylor gave her crew before the final Eras Tour concert in Vancouver, Canada, on December 8, 2024.
“I wanna say that I’m constantly reminded of one of my favorite quotes, which is that everyone’s jealous of what you’ve got. No one is jealous of what you had to do to get it,” she began. “Everyone likes to talk about phenomenons like The Eras Tour almost as if it was pieces falling into place in some sort of destined, accidental confluence of events that just happened, right? When I’m thinking about the people that are in this circle, I don’t think about it as pieces that fell into place.”
Taylor continued, “I think of each of you as like tectonic plates on the earth, and The Eras Tour wasn’t when all the pieces fell into place — that was just when every single one of us who had done so much work, to where this tour was just when we all clicked together. We have traveled the entire world. We have gone through America twice. We have set every attendance record in every huge stadium. We have broken every single record you can break with this tour. The only thing left is to close the book. For one last time.”
In her final confessional interview, Taylor admitted that The Eras Tour exceeded even her own expectations based on past milestones she hit in her career. “I’m used to doing tours that are successful,” she explained. “I’ve never been a part of a phenomenon before.”
