TAYLOR SWIFT’S NEW DOCUMENTARY GIVES US A DEEPLY MOVING INSIGHT INTO THE WOMAN BEHIND THE EMPIRE

Disney+ released the first two episodes of The End Of An Era, a six-part docuseries about Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, this morning. This is undoubtedly the most candid access we have ever had to Swift. 

It’s an exciting day for her fans. Not only do we have two episodes a week to see us through to Boxing Day, but a new Eras tour film is now available to stream, complete with an additional section for The Tortured Poets Department, which was added mid-way through the tour. There’s so much to enjoy if you need a reminder of the record-breaking tour that became a pop culture phenomenon.

The first 11 minutes of this fly-on-the-wall series were optimistic and moving. We opened on Swift in a pre-show huddle with her dancers, giving them a pep-talk before they took to the stage. Her mind wanders, she explains, when she contemplates how grateful she is for them. “I think about every single one of you as little kids. I think about the moment that you decided that dancing was your calling or the moment you saw a band and saved up for an instrument.” She is clearly so proud of them.

We’re reminded of the magic of the tour. We see the fans, their outfits, the friendship bracelets, the shared joy. It’s enough to take you back to those summer days, watching TikTok footage of the previous night’s concert when you woke up, and preparing your outfit if you were lucky enough to get tickets. 

But mere minutes into the fairytale, we’re hit with reminders of the Eras tour moments we weren’t able to celebrate. We see her Vienna dates being cancelled due to an Islamic State-inspired terror threat. We watch her break down in tears as she tries to explain that there has been a terror attack in Southport. Three children, aged 6–11, were murdered in a massacre at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, and she can’t speak about it. An innocent community was hijacked by pure evil, and now she is reflecting.

“I’m meeting the families tonight,” she tells us, having organised for survivors and victims’ families to spend time with her before her shows in Wembley. She cries as she explains: “I won’t do this, I swear to God. I’ll be smiling. Any of this gets out the way before you go on stage, you lock it off. Three and a half hours, they don’t have to worry about you.”

I found myself crying with her. The whole situation is incomprehensible. The responsibility she feels in this moment, it’s clear, is to do anything in her power to bring them any small semblance of comfort. 

Something so beautiful about this documentary is the intimacy of it. We scan rails of costumes backstage. This is where those special moments were created. We see glistening tinsel Karma jackets hung, awaiting adventure. Lorrie Turk, her long-time make-up artist, meticulously applies her signature eyeliner flicks as Swift scrolls on her phone. Turk was one of my favourite parts of the Eras tour. Every night, she went out into the crowd and filmed the audience. She captured every shared moment, every thoughtful outfit – the tenderness of it all. What I loved about Turk is that she saw and felt the community each night, and from everything we see in this docuseries, so did Swift.

It is crystal clear to me that Swift listened to the fans when she created this. She saw it all. Remember how much we loved her dancer Kam Saunders, listening each night for whatever his location-appropriate brush off would be in We Are Never Getting Back Together? Well, we got his whole backstory in episode two. We heard all about how he came to join the Eras tour family; we even met his mum. Swift knows how much this will mean to us because she saw that Saunders was just as much a TikTok highlight each night as she was.

There’s so much nuance like this. We see her inside her cleaning cart, the one we knew she was travelling in to disguise herself at the venues. We see her huddled around a phone because six of the audio guys got the same commemorative tour tattoo. We watch her write individual cards to each of her dancers, musicians and crew members.

Amid happy moments, like seeing Ed Sheeran or Florence Welch, there is more upset. The meeting itself is private and unseen, but Swift and her mother are both deeply unsettled after meeting the Southport families. Whatever you have to say about her music, I can’t see how you would come away from watching this and feel anything other than empathy.

A lot of people wear not liking Taylor Swift as a badge of honour. As a fan, I hope that this documentary reaches the people who give her a hard time and they might just give her a break. We see Swift in a new light here: vulnerable and giving. It only takes a quick google to see what she donated in every city she visited while on tour. She is generous with her time, and I hope what comes of this documentary is that we remember that she is just a woman trying to do her best.

This series serves as a huge love letter to her fans. I cannot wait to watch the rest of it. 

The first two episodes of The End Of An Era are now available to stream on Disney+, with two new episodes on December 19th and the final two episodes streaming on Boxing Day. 

Images: Getty

2025-12-12T16:33:08Z