Hidden Details In Taylor Swift’s "The Fate of Ophelia" Video You Might Have Missed!

Just as surely as the sun sets or the moon rises, Taylor Swift once again emerges with an album that seems to make the world pause. And for true Swifties, it’s been nothing but pure joy to unravel the lyrics and easter eggs woven throughout her 12th studio release. What better place to start than with the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” — a video that has me pausing every few seconds and regretting every moment I ever zoned out in English class.

While Taylor admitted recently on Apple Music’s "The Zane Lowe Show" that she put over 100 easter eggs in this video, we will be taking a look at the most prominent ones that have been found so far, tapping lightly into their meanings and sentiment. 

For starters, the video opens to an impressive hall where a golden chandelier shines over a group photo of Taylor with Max Martin and Shellback, who are not only the creators of this album but also some of her biggest hits like “Wildest Dreams” and “Delicate”. This could be a gentle reminder that, no matter how glittery things get, she stays connected to her beginnings and the people who helped her get to where she is today. 

Next, of course, we have Taylor sprawling in flowing chiffon, bringing Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Heyser’s eerie painting The Death of Ophelia (1900) to life, merging Shakespeare's tragic figure with her own persona. If you haven’t tapped into the lyrics yet, Taylor is singing about how Travis Kelce might have saved her from suffering the same fate as Ophelia, a woman who was driven to madness by the men in her life until she drowned in a river. 

When Taylor rises from the painting, an orange bird darts across the background. It appears several times throughout the music video, likely referencing the birdcage scene from “Look What You Made Me Do” where Taylor, dressed in orange, stood trapped inside a cage. But in keeping with the themes of this album, Taylor now shows a sense of liberation. She is the bird, soaring freely without restriction.

And for those who caught The Life of a Showgirl during its limited theatrical release last weekend, you already know how excited Swift was to showcase her homemade sourdough loaf, which appears just as Taylor reaches out, allowing the orange bird to perch gently on her hand. We all know how much she loves her sourdough, becoming famous both as a baker and a pop star on the rise (heehee, get it?). 

It’s around this point in the video that I pulled the classic Leonardo DiCaprio meme, leaned forward in my chair, and pointed at the screen, when I recognized the backup dancers from her record-breaking Eras Tour. It felt like a family reunion, enriching the tone and reinforcing the star power of the dancers who work so closely with her. 

Next, we have the iconic dressing room, which many speculate is a nod to Marilyn Monroe. In the background, her fiancé Travis’s photo is stuck on the mirror, and a clock is set at 10:05, which also happens to be Kelce’s birth date. 

After a beautifully shot scene, likely depicting William Etty’s 1837 painting The Sirens and Ulysses, we are presented with a grand set, reminiscent of a sequence straight out of Footlight Parade (1933). Here, a clapperboard reads “Sequins Are Forever", with “Featuring Kitty Finlay” written below. Kitty is a persona from Taylor’s Showgirl era, and Finlay, of course, is her mother’s maiden name.

Toward the end of the video, we enter a grand, fast-paced scene set in a hotel hallway, representing a post-Eras show celebration with Taylor and her crew. As she glides down the hallway on a rolling table, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment when a woman carrying a purse and a chihuahua steps out. This is a direct reference to the lyrics of “Actually Romantic", in which Taylor seems to describe an adversary as formidable as a toy chihuahua. 

Once Taylor steps off the table and enters the hotel room, we can see the number 87 shining on the door, which is another nod to Kelce, whose number on the Kansas City Chiefs is 87. Finally, in the closing moments, Taylor retreats to a bathroom to escape the uninvited paparazzi. As she passes the window, a quick glimpse of Science World in Vancouver appears, a subtle tribute to the final stop of the Eras Tour.

Following this, we begin to zoom in on Taylor lying in a bathtub, but not before getting a quick glimpse of an Oscar casually sitting on the bathroom floor, a nod to the lyrics of “Wi$h Li$t”, in which Taylor sings about no longer wanting all the credentials of show business, but, instead, just a life with -- you guessed it -- Travis Kelce.

And then, in the final shot, Swift mirrors Millais’s 1852 Ophelia, which parallels the album cover. 

Phew… I’m out of breath, and if my math is right, there are still more than 85 Easter eggs left to uncover [cue the eye twitch]. But for now, I’ll return to streaming “Opalite” or “Honey” for the thousandth time, bidding farewell to my aesthetic Spotify Wrapped in the name of enjoying one of my favorite albums of the year.