Taylor Swift put her mastermind to work with the number of Easter eggs in her “The Fate of Ophelia” music video.
“I had a list of just … It was like, over a hundred Easter eggs to put into that video, and I was just going through my list and checking them off one by one as we were going through our production design process,” Swift, 35, said during her Tuesday, October 7, appearance on Apple Music’s “The Zane Lowe Show.” “It’s a blast because the fans have made it a blast, because they know that this all points to current art, past art or future art. That’s pretty much the realm of the Easter egg thing.”
She continued of her fans, “So the fact that they care that much about the sort of canon of albums that I’ve made or plans I may have in the future, it’s like, I just am very honored by it, and it seems like they’re still having fun with it. As long as this is something that’s fun for them, it’s going to be fun for me to plan.”
Swift released “The Fate of Ophelia” music video alongside her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, on October 3. The album’s poppy opening track tells the story of Travis Kelce’s public declaration of wanting to meet and date Swift on his podcast, and many fans noticed the numerous references to the now-engaged couple’s love story in the video.
At one point, Swift catches a football and runs into a hotel room numbered 87 — Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs jersey number. Elsewhere, fans thought they saw a black and white photo of Kelce, 36, hanging on a vanity mirror and linked the image to a 2016 interview where the NFL star played a game of “Kiss, Marry, Kill” with Swift, Katy Perry and Ariana Grande.
The music video also features several literary references, particularly those related to Ophelia, the tragic character who dies by drowning in William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. (Swift sings that Kelce “saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.”)
Additionally, the video contains a few references to other tracks on the album, such as the phrase, “Sequins are forever,” a play on Elizabeth Taylor’s famous phrase, “Diamonds are forever.” The album’s second track is called “Elizabeth Taylor.”
Swift opened up about her inspiration for “The Fate of Ophelia” and wanting to give the character a happy ending during her October 3 appearance on Hits 1.
“I have this fixation on Shakespeare characters that I love and I can’t stand to see them meet a tragic demise,” she said, adding that she tried to flip the script in “Fate of Ophelia” and with her 2008 song “Love Story,” which was inspired by Romeo and Juliet.
“Someone comes into your life and rescues you from the fate of being driven mad by love,” Swift continued.
Swift and Travis began dating in July 2023 after Travis lamented on his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce that he didn’t get the chance to meet the pop star after seeing her Eras Tour concert in Kansas City, Missouri. (He had wanted to give Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it.) The pair connected after the episode and took their relationship public in September 2023.
Swift announced her engagement to Travis on August 26 — just two weeks after she unveiled The Life of a Showgirl on “New Heights.”
“Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she captioned photos from their garden proposal.
