Taylor Swift’s ‘End of an Era’: What We Learned From Episodes Three and Four

“Men will let you down. The ‘Eras Tour’ never will.”

Taylor Swift / Jamie McCarthy/WireImage/Getty Images

The latest episodes of Taylor Swift’s docuseries The End of an Era are officially streaming on Disney+ as of today, Dec. 19, and with these two new episodes came plenty of revelations about the record-breaking tour.

The latest entries into the saga pull the curtain back even further on the magic of the three-hour stage show while also giving fans a glimpse into Swift’s personal life at the time, including her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

These episodes took place following the two-month break discussed in the first two episodes, and depict how the team came back together to pick up right where they left off.

Catch up on episodes one and two of The End of an Era here!

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Episode Three: “Kismet”

To start the episode, a montage of Swift played, depicting the beginning of her musical journey. From there, she discussed how planning tours has always been a big part of her career. The docuseries crew then interviewed several Eras Tour dancers and band members, who reflected on what it was like to be away from home while on the road for two years, and what it felt like coming “back to reality.”

Swift used her wardrobe to help with fans feel “nostalgia”

The artist and her longtime stylist, Joseph Cassell, met for a fitting and reflected on the ways they used throwback imagery from Swift’s career throughout the show. Calling on designers who worked with Swift in the past, Cassell sought to keep the general designs of her ensembles the same while simultaneously updating them to match Swift’s current style.

“Nostalgia is a huge part of the Eras Tour. If you were 12 years old during the Red era, you’re going to remember certain things that you saw and certain things that you felt,” Swift said of their mindset during the design process. “It’s my job to bring those feelings and those visuals back to you. Wardrobe is one way to do that.”

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The transitions between eras were complicated—and sometimes even chaotic

To move between set pieces and quick changes on time, Swift noted that the team had the performance planned down to the second. However, these short transitions often meant Swift was left to literally run behind the scenes to accomplish all the changes needed—and this running once resulted in a nasty injury.

“I remember one time I was running from the Evermore era. I trip over the hem of my dress, bust my knee," Swift recounted. “I skid the palm of my hand off. Hobble into the quick-change room. Blood’s coming down my hand, I’m changing into the Reputation bodysuit. The skin that’s flapping off? I pull it off, more blood, they don’t have a bandaid back there—and I wasn’t late.”

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Backup singer Jeslyn Gorman fought breast cancer behind the scenes

Much of the episode highlighted the sweet family dynamic the team cultivated while on the road together as they navigated the highs and lows of the once-in-a-lifetime experience. While there was plenty of joy present throughout the tour, it was not without its difficult moments. One such moment was when Gorman, a backup vocalist for Swift, disclosed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer amid their travels.

“When I let Taylor know, she came storming in with hugs and [was] crying and saying, ‘I’m just so sorry,’” Gorman recalled. “And [Swift’s] mom said: ‘You just take care of you, and we’ll be here when you’re ready.’ Six months, I had to take off and go through chemo and surgery.”

After she finished treatment, Gorman asked the doctors how quickly she could rejoin the tour, immediately hopping on a plane to reunite with her “family” and continue the show.

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Episode Four: “Thank You For The Lovely Bouquet”

The fourth episode of the docuseries featured the first physical appearance of Swift’s fiancé and detailed the role the football star played in her life at the time. The artist also shared a little about he making of The Tortured Poets Department, and how she managed to pull off a couple of surprise cameos.

Swift opened up about her breakups at the start of the tour

“There were never points in the tour when I thought, ‘Oh, you know what? I want to quit the tour because the tour’s hard.’ No, my personal life was hard,” Swift stated. “I went through two breakups in the first half of this tour, and that’s a lot of breakups, actually. The show was what gave me purpose and was what I could use to get me out of bed.” She then went on to joke, “Men will let you down. The Eras Tour never will.”

She also discussed what writing her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, was like while on the road, and how writing the songs helped her release the feelings she was working through.

“[The] Tortured Poets album is like this purge of just, like, everything. Everything bad I felt for two years. It was a really rough time in my life, so the songs reflect that,” Swift noted. “Feeling like I’m not a person. I’m just this, like, big conglomerate that no one sees as a real human being—and especially not men that I date. And in the whole process just being like, ‘Nothing works, there’s no one for me in the world.’”

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Swift’s mother played a big role in her meeting Kelce

“I’m looking at the headlines and perusing around what’s on the internet, and I see that this guy came to your show and he brought a friendship bracelet and wants to meet you,” Andrea Swift, the artist’s mother, revealed. “And so, of course, I call up my resident expert on the Kansas City Chiefs: my cousin Robin. And I go, ‘Tell me about this guy named Travis Kelce.’ And she goes, ‘Oh my God, he’s the nicest guy. And you know what? He really loves his mom.’ And I went, ‘Ding, ding, ding, ding!’”

The artist then revealed that she typically stayed away from athletes in her dating life, as she wasn’t one herself and wondered what they would “talk about,” to which her mother had replied, “Listen, you’ve got to start doing something different.” Her mother concluded by adding, “I thought it was the sweetest thing in the world that he came to your show. He brought you something from your world. To me, that really said a lot.”

This episode also detailed how Kelce’s cameo onstage during “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” came to be, and Kelce himself made his first official appearance in the docuseries at the end of the episode, cheering Swift on from the audience.

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How Sabrina Carpenter’s onstage cameo came together

Clips filmed backstage showed that Swift met with Carpenter the day of the show to map out how her surprise appearance would work, with Swift planning to tease the audience by singing Carpenter’s hit “Espresso” before bringing her out onstage.

“The other day, Erica says, ‘Sabrina and some friends want to come to the show in New Orleans,’ so I look up her schedule, and she’s got, like, a show yesterday and a show tomorrow in different states. And I was like, ‘Is this, like, child abuse for me to even ask her to perform on her one day off?’” Swift joked before adding, “I know she’s, like, 25, but still.”

Carpenter was fully on board for the plan, and the two continued to workshop their skit idea, with Swift referring to the surprise as one of the “craziest moments of the tour” and saying that she wanted Carpenter onstage with her “for a million years.”

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When do the final two episodes come out?

Episodes five and six of The End of an Era—the final two episodes of the limited series—will be available to stream on Disney+ next Friday, Dec. 26!

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