If the first two episodes of “The End of an Era” — the documentary series about Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour — were defined by how Swift weathered the brutal moments that befell her road show, the final four are marked by the pop star’s joy.
The last batch of episodes, now all available to stream on Disney+, chart how Swift rebounded from not one but two heartbreaks and embarked on a relationship with her fiancé, Travis Kelce. Along the way, she recorded yet another album in secret and completed the record-breaking concert extravaganza. Though the Kelce details are perhaps the most tantalizing, Swift also offers more insight into the complexities and challenges of mounting a tour of that scale.
Here are seven takeaways.
Physical training for the tour was intense.
One of the most viral moments from the third episode involves footage of Swift training at the gym to be onstage moving for three and a half hours. “I’ve never worked out this much in my life,” she says. “It’s horrible.” Six months before her first rehearsal, she started running on the treadmill every day to the tempo of her songs while singing them. Footage also shows her performing crunches and pull ups, and using battle ropes. It’s all to maintain the illusion of effortlessness, as she tells her trainer you don’t want the audience to see you panting.
Quick changes can be hazardous.
One of the most revealing bits comes when cameras delve into the bowels of the stage to demonstrate how Swift changed costumes in under two minutes: She was dragged on what she calls a “pulley system,” unzipping her outfits on the go, and ran upstairs to designated rooms. During one show, she tripped on the hem of her dress, fell and ripped open her palm. After tearing off the dangling skin, she made her cue for the next era, still bleeding.
Her acoustic sets required on-the-fly planning.
The final four episodes show Swift plotting her acoustic interludes, which varied night to night and were the least-rehearsed elements of the show. Still, Swift, a type-A student, explains that she would never just wing it, prepping in her dressing room and bouncing ideas off her mother, Andrea. As Swift devises her complicated medley for the final show in Vancouver, it’s Andrea who suggests that she sing “it was the end of an era” in the track “Long Live” instead of the usual lyric “it was the end of a decade.” Swift loves the idea.
Andrea Swift was a matchmaker.
In the fourth episode, Swift’s mother recounts how she encouraged her daughter to date Kelce after hearing him talk about the star on his “New Heights” podcast. Andrea called up a Kansas City football-loving cousin who promised Kelce was the “nicest guy” who “really loves his mom.” That was all Andrea needed to start prodding her daughter, despite the fact that Swift had never been into athletes. “You said something to the effect of, ‘You gotta start doing something different,’” Swift remembers. Swift’s previous boyfriends are not mentioned by name, but she does discuss how she went through two breakups on the first half of the tour, adding that Eras was what kept her going.
‘The Life of a Showgirl’ came about during clandestine trips to Sweden.
In the penultimate episode, Swift explains that she started jetting to Sweden in between her shows to write her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” alongside the producers Max Martin and Shellback, who had last collaborated with her on “Reputation” in 2017. “I was in a place in my life where life felt so full of possibility and it felt like I was figuring things out,” she says of the desire to work on the LP. As for her hitmaking co-workers, she explains she always thought of herself as their apprentice.
Swift has scouts scour the audience for the kid who appeared during her ‘Red’ set.
Each night on the Eras Tour, Swift gave a young fan her hat during the song “22.” In the documentary, she describes how members of her team would scan the audience to find a “kid who knows every single word to the songs and having the time of their life at this show.” While she says some of the young fans got shy under the lights, others were living out their mini pop star fantasies. One girl, she remembers, shook her to her core by asking, “Is this real life?,” to which Swift didn’t have an answer.
The tour was all-consuming.
The documentary gives viewers a powerful sense of how hard Swift worked on the Eras experience. “You just don’t have any energy for anything that seems optional,” she says. Her goal after the tour was to regain the parts of herself she had to cut off while focusing so intensely: “I know I used to have hobbies and like, a personality.” The series ends with title cards explaining what she’s been up to since it ended — including getting engaged and releasing “The Life of a Showgirl.” Of course, we already know.
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