The day is here, Swifties: The new Disney+ docuseries, Taylor Swift: The End of an Era, has officially debuted on the streaming service on Friday, December 12 with its first two installments. (Here's a handy episode release guide so you don't miss any future episodes!) The six-part series gives Taylor Swift fans a behind-the-scenes look into what it took to create one of the biggest stage experiences in recent memory, The Eras Tour, one that spanned five continents, 21 countries and a whopping 149 concerts.
It's an experience that the pop icon called "the most exhausting but all-encompassing, most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life,” per CBS News. And the docuseries will be a tribute to that career high, populated by all of the people—including Eras Tour backup dancers and crew, fellow pop performers like Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams, to Swift's personal inner circle including her family and fiancé Travis Kelce — who helped bring that dream to life.
With the first two episodes already out, here are five things we've learned from Taylor Swift: The End of an Era so far.
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5 Things We Learned from Episodes 1 and 2 of Taylor Swift's Docuseries
If we had double Oscar winner Emma Stone as a bestie, we, too, would be taking all of her advice. So we can't blame Taylor for running with Stone's suggestion of hiring choreographer Mandy Moore (nope, not her) to be in charge of the entire dance production on the Eras Tour, as revealed in episode 2 of the docuseries.
The actress had previously worked with Moore for her Academy Award-winning performance on La La Land. Moore would go on not only to choreograph all of the Eras Tour routines—fans can see her tinkering with moves for Swift and Florence Welch's surprise London performance of "Florida" in the same ep—but also Swift music videos like "The Fate of Ophelia." Good call, Emma!Related: Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Choreographer: Everything to Know About Mandy Moore Ahead of the Disney+ Docuseries ‘The End of an Era’
2. Two devastating events inspired the creation of the Eras Tour
In the new doc, the singer-songwriter shares how she came up with the idea for The Eras Tour "about two years" before it officially launched in March 2023, and how two earth-shattering events—one personal and one global—were at the center of her decision.
Those moments were, of course, the purchase of her master recordings by record executive Scooter Braun—which led Swift to rerecord almost all of her albums, signified with "Taylor's Version" attached to each record and track—as well as the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. “I just thought to myself, ‘What if I did a tour that celebrated all of these different moments in my life and career where you have chapters divided up by albums and everything changes when the chapter changes?'” she said.
“I wanted to overserve the fans. That was my main goal," Swift added. "I wanted to overserve them in terms of the amount of songs they were going to hear, the length of the show, what kinds of production they were going to see, different styles of dance, different worlds of dance, wardrobe, how far I was going to push myself.”
Taylor Swift Taylor Swift: The End of an EraDisney+
In August 2024, three Eras Tour concerts in Vienna were canceled after Austrian authorities thwarted a planned terrorist attack — which the CIA said aimed to kill "tens of thousands of people," per PEOPLE — by a group of radicalized teens. The incident came only a month after another horrific event: the stabbings of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in Southport, UK.
Both occurrences clearly shook Swift, who can be seen breaking down in the doc after meeting with the families of the Southport victims. In one ep, she recounts the horror she felt while receiving word about the Austrian terror plot while on a plane flying to Vienna for the shows, and also her concerns about continuing the tour in the attack's wake.
"It's just kind of a weird feeling going into these last five shows in Europe because it sort of feels like we've done like 128 shows so far, but this is the first one where I feel like...I don't know, like, I'm skating on thin ice or something. We've had a series of very violent, scary things happen to the tour. We dodged, like, a massacre situation. And so I've just been kind of all over the place," Swift shared as she prepped for her emotional return to the stage at Wembley Stadium. |Related: When Does ‘Taylor Swift: The End of an Era’ Come Out? Episode Schedule, Release Times and More
4. Taylor's six-digit bonus checks caused one Eras Tour crew member to nearly faint
We already knew that Swift was extra-generous with her crew following the success of the Eras Tour, handing out a whopping $197 million in bonuses to everyone working on her tour, from backup dancers to the food caterers to the instrument techs and everyone in between.
But the doc gave fans a front-row view of the crew receiving the gifts, which, in classic Taylor fashion, arrived in an envelope that contained a poem the star had written and was personally hand-sealed with golden wax. In one clip, viewers can see Max Holmes, a member of the Eras Tour production team, getting a little light-headed after seeing the check's hefty lump sum.
"It’s fun to think about everybody’s lives that they’re gonna go back to and the time off they’re gonna have and the kids they haven’t seen because they’ve been away for months, and just making that worthwhile for them is really — it feels like Christmas morning when you finally get to say thank you,” Taylor said in the doc. Related: Meet the Dancers Bringing Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to Life in the Upcoming New Docuseries
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce; David Eulitt/Getty ImagesDavid Eulitt/Getty Images
5. Swift used audiobooks, hot baths and phone calls from Travis to decompress from the tour
With the amount of adrenaline and stamina needed to sustain three hours of high-energy performing, it's not a shock that it can take a while to come down from the thrills and pressures of touring. In the first two episodes of the docuseries, we see Taylor employ many decompression methods, from post-gig hot baths to snuggles with her cat to sweet phone calls from her soon-to-be hubby, Travis.
“I’m not gonna be able to get to sleep ’cause I can’t, like, come down,” she said of her after-show routine, in episode one. “This is why people need drugs, but I don’t do drugs, so I just, like, let it ride. I just am like, ‘Oh, I’ll go to sleep when I’m tired.’ And when I’m tired, it’s like 4 in the morning. So I watch tons of TV, I eat room service in bed, I sign a box of 2,000 CDs and then I’m tired. And then we do the whole thing again.”
We also see the music icon listening to audiobooks to help shake her nerves, especially after high-stress events like the Vienna and Southport incidents.
Next, Taylor Swift Shares Major Personal Revelation on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’
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