In Taylor Swift’s ‘End of an Era’ Trailer, Mama Swift Says What We’re All Thinking: “That’s Complicated”

Nothing can ever prepare you for being a parent and the feelings you’ll experience: watching as your child takes their first steps, heads into their first day of school, gets their first job, and first explains to you in painstaking detail how they’re going to combine three of their songs from three of their albums—all certified multiplatinum—in front of 50,000-plus screaming fans on the final night of their record-shattering 149-show world tour.

Perhaps some parenting milestones are more universal than others.

In the first trailer for The End of an Era, the upcoming six-episode Disney+ docuseries on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, fans see Andrea Swift, the singer’s mother, in just that last scenario.

“So it goes ‘New Year’s Day’ verse and chorus, ‘Manuscript’ bridge into ‘Long Live’ bridge, into the down verse of ‘Long Live,’ into ‘Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you,’ into ‘Long Live’ chorus but slowed down to half time, ‘New Year’s Day’ chords underneath it, into the last verse of ‘The Manuscript,’” Swift rattles off in the trailer’s final clip as her mother watches with a stunned expression that may be one of horror or one of admiration, but is probably both.

After a beat, Andrea says, “That’s complicated,” not even bothering to remove her balled-up fist from where it’s resting on her chin as she listens to her daughter’s grand plan for the supersized surprise song mash-up that she performed for the final night of the tour in Vancouver on December 8, 2024.

An incredibly successful artist, Swift occupies a singular position in our cultural consciousness, with her work and very life drawing just as much public criticism as they do fervent fan adoration. She’s incredibly private about her personal life—remember the rumor that she left her apartment building in a gigantic suitcase so as not to be photographed outside? I sure do!—while sharing other experiences and feelings in painstaking detail, whether through her song lyrics and letters or documentaries and interviews. Consider that she spent nearly two hours chatting with then boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason Kelce, on their New Heights podcast in August—sharing not only the title, cover art, and release date for her newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, but also Travis’s dream pet, a “really specific type of otter.” (In short: a wild one he rescues, thus earning its unending devotion.)

After the recording, later in the day, Travis proposed to her. A few short weeks later, she shared that too.

All of this is to say that just when it seems like Swift has shown all her cards and there’s nothing left to reveal, the singer produces yet more compelling work. The original Eras Tour concert film had its theatrical run extended, then extended again, and you’d think, perhaps, that the appetite for a three-plus-hour filmed show would be sated, but here comes The Eras Tour | The Final Show, another full-length filmed concert, this one including the Tortured Poets Department set that Swift added to the tour after that album’s release. The new concert film will be released on December 12 on Disney+, as will the first two of episodes of the six-installment docuseries, just in time for Swift’s 36th birthday on December 13.

If this first trailer, released Thursday, is anything to go by, the docuseries, directed by Kelce alum Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce, will have plenty of new material to offer. For one thing, the brief video includes more footage of Travis Kelce—playing football, talking on the phone with Swift, rehearsing and performing an Eras Tour cameo with Swift, crouching like a gremlin in wait under the tour stage and squealing “Tay Tay!” at his partner’s appearance—than the entirety of the feature-length documentary Miss Americana did of Swift’s past partner, the famously media-shy Joe Alwyn. Also present in the trailer are known Swift associates Sabrina Carpenter, Ed Sheeran, Florence Welch, and even Meredith the cat. Witness Swift’s wall of Post-it notes with song titles, a twisted vision board for surprise song planning. See her folded into the iconic cleaning cart that shuttled her to her mark at the beginning of the concert. Relate—so deeply—to the wide-eyed look of exasperation she serves her mother after her “complicated” remark.

In voice-over, Swift shares that she started planning the Eras Tour some two years before she kicked it off, explaining that she “wanted to overserve the fans” with the experience.

Considering that over the course of the tour, she released two (Taylor’s Version) rerecordings, Speak Now and 1989, plus the supersized Tortured Poets Department, and wrote and recorded the recently released Life of a Showgirl, it feels fair to say that she achieved her goal. And now that the Swifties have eaten so well, it’s time to make room for even more. Long live.

Representatives for Swift and Disney+ did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment.