The Eras Tour Was a Love Story All Along

There are four postscripts at the end of The End of an Era, Taylor Swift’s Disney+ docuseries about her time on the last leg of the Eras Tour. The first postscript totals up the number of shows the team accomplished. The second postscript informs the audience that it was through her fans’ “support” (financial) that Swift was able to buy back her masters in May 2025. The third postscript is about Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce, and the fourth and final note goes as such: “On October 3, 2025 Taylor released her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, the biggest album of her career,” and then, after a beat, “to date.” It’s true that Showgirl was a momentous success for the singer (despite middling reviews), but ending the often emotional six-episode docuseries on a note about Swift’s victories, not necessarily artistic, undercuts much of what she’s trying to argue. That argument, reflected over the course of the episodes, is that the Eras Tour was an act of love. In fact, everything Swift has ever done is about love: love of songwriting, love of music, love for family and friends and her partners. An old clip plays in the fifth episode, “Marjorie,” in which Swift runs around during the Reputation recordings yelling, “I love songs!” It’s clear she does, but she especially loves songs when they sell.

It’s a shame that The End of an Era ends on such a business-forward note, because on the whole, the series does a good job proving Swift’s central thesis that love sits at the heart of what made this tour successful. The show is at its best when it extends its grace to tangents about Swift’s dancers, backup singers, musicians, collaborators, and family members. Some of them have quite Lifetime-movie-style stories to tell, but many of them are just workman figures in the music industry. These are hardworking professionals whose lives have been completely upended by the Eras Tour. That they continue to find themselves rewarded (emotionally and financially) for their efforts is no less than what they deserve; that they still lip-sync and dance along to songs they’re not involved in after two years proves Swift’s star is nowhere close to flickering. When Swift breaks down after singing the song “Marjorie” about her grandmother in Toronto, she later tells her mom it’s because of a story a backup singer told her in the huddle before the show. Swift feels deeply, and her show (both the Eras and docu varieties) works the best when you can tell these things all still mean something to her.

There is occasionally cognitive dissonance between what Swift shows us and what we know to be true when it comes to the tour. When she tries to explain how she built the show around surprising and pleasing the fans, trying to get close to them despite being unable to do meet and greets (she cites COVID-era health precautions as the main reason), the example she gives is diving into the stage. There were a lot of technical surprises to the Eras Tour, but that wasn’t what the fans were necessarily there for. They were there for the songs. Time and time again, Swift’s mother, Andrea, and other people around her remind her that the show is about joy. It’s about having fun. It’s about being distracted just long enough to abandon worry. That’s all well and good, but a lot of Swift’s oeuvre is not, in fact, about joy. “I have very clear distinctions about being the leader of this show that’s this mass exodus of emotional catharsis,” Swift explains in the final episode’s talking head. “What’s interesting is there’s some joy in the show, but there’s also a lot of, like, snarling, angry bitterness, despondent, heartbroken, wistful, theatrical magic.” Her work is often furious and emotional and sad as much as it is also (or simultaneously) a lot of fun. That the series goes out with yet another boast of her successes is part of that snarling, to some degree, proving that the love always puts her on top.