10 of the Biggest Revelations From Taylor Swift's Documentary 'End of an Era'

Taylor Swift did not hold anything back in her Disney+ documentary series End of an Era.

Debuted on December 12, the Don Argott-directed six-episode docuseries provided a close-up of Swift's journey when she embarked on her record-breaking Eras Tour. It also went back to the very start, with the singer sharing how she came up with the idea for the concert tour amid the COVID-19 pandemic and after the sale of her masters.

"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 shared.

Swift continued, "I wanted to overserve the fans. That was my main goal. 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."

"The Fate of Ophelia" songstress ultimately kicked it off in Glendale, Ariz., in March 2023.

When Swift concluded the final live show of the Eras Tour in Vancouver on December 8, 2024, she serenaded her fans with "Long Live" but changed a key lyric. Instead of "It was the end of a decade," she sang, "It was the end of an era."

"You look out there and it's not just a blob of lights," she said of her experience performing in front of her fans. "There's millions of stories and counter-narratives all colliding in one place where we feel safe to be demonstrative of a whole spectrum of emotion."

In the second episode of End of an Era, Swift revealed how she and her band managed to keep the biggest moments secret, especially her special setlists.

"It is so much extra work to keep things a surprise," she said, sharing she and her band would turn down the volume during rehearsals and practice everything as quietly as possible to prevent fans from hearing her surprise performances.

Swift added, "Let me tell ya, I need a nap just thinking about it. But it's so worth it when we can actually pull it off."

Swift's friend Emma Stone recommended choreographer Mandy Moore, not to be confused with actress Mandy Moore, to work with her Eras Tour team. The professional dancer collaborated with Stone on the 2016 film La La Land.

"With choreography, I asked one of my friends, Emma Stone, who's done a lot of work in dance in her films, 'Who have you worked with that you would recommend for this?'" she disclosed in the docuseries. "And she's like, 'There's only one person that needs to be on your list and it's Mandy Moore.'"

Reflecting on how the dance instructor works with her, she revealed, "Mandy knows how to approach teaching me choreography from a lyrical perspective. I don't do eight counts. I learn based on what syllable of the lyric I'm attaching a movement to. And I can't really learn any other way. I've tried."

Swift's fiancé, Travis Kelce, has always been her biggest supporter, and End of an Era documented some of their sweetest moments during the Eras Tour.

The couple had a cute phone call before one of her shows in London, during which the "mirrorball" singer told her beau, "Some people got a vitamin drip, I got this conversation."

After the show, she called the Kansas City Chiefs tight end again to tell him about her day.

"I can hear it in your voice," Kelce said, to which Swift responded, "I'm just so happy to be back doing this."

Over the course of 149 shows in 21 countries, Swift developed a routine to unwind and recharge.

"I'm not gonna be able to get to sleep 'cause I can't, like, come down," she said while removing her makeup.

Swift added, "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."

The highlight of End of an Era Episode 2 was Swift giving out a total of $197 million in bonuses to everyone working on her Eras Tour.

"Bonus day is so important, because setting a precedent with The Eras Tour is really important to me, because people who work on the road, if the tour grosses more, they get more of a bonus, and these people just work so hard, and they are the best at what they do," she said.

Swift's production company, Taylor Swift Touring, previously confirmed to The New York Times that the concert tour sold $2,077,618,725 in total tickets, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time.

She added in the docuseries, "So, every single person on the crew, I've handwritten them a note. It took me a couple weeks, but it's fun to write the notes. 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."

The first episode of End of an Era docuseries also took fans to the most heartbreaking parts of the Eras Tour, including the "violent" things that happened throughout the run of her shows.

"I thought this would be a tour I would be proud of. It's like a force to be reckoned with in global culture. So, never in my life did I think we would have a terrorist plot," she said in a clip, which was recorded days after she was forced to cancel three concerts in Vienna due to a terrorist plot at one of her scheduled concerts.

Swift's eyes welled with tears as she noted the incident was one of the most difficult moments of her career.

"This was the first one I feel like – I don't know – I'm skating on thin ice or something. We've had a series of violent, scary things happen to the tour. Like, we dodged a massacre situation and so I've just been kind of all over the place," she said. "We dodged a massacre situation."

Swift choked up when she spoke about the July 2024 stabbing incident at a Swift-themed dance party in Southport, England, leaving three young girls dead. Ten other individuals were injured at the time.

Although she promised not to cry when she met the victims' loved ones, she said she was having "a hard time explaining" the stabbings: "I swear to God. I'm not going to be doing this; I'm going to be smiling, so any of this gets out of the way before you ever go on stage."

After a series of tragedies plagued the Eras Tour, Swift grappled with pre-show jitters before her Wembley Stadium concert.

"I just need to do this show, remember the joy of it," she told her friend Ed Sheeran backstage.

When the "Perfect" singer asked her about her plans after her Wembley shows, Swift shared, "I'm just gonna go somewhere no one can find me. I just don't want to be tracked like an animal. I just have felt very hunted lately."