Taylor Swift announced The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on Sept. 23, consisting of four brand new deluxe songs in addition to the album’s existing 12. And Swifties won’t have to wait long to get them — they drop on Sept. 25, and I’m already counting down the hours. But it might shock some of the newer Swifties to know that the announcement comes with some deep lore involving some of your favorite Marvel characters. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Back in 2019, fans were all but convinced that Swift would be announced as the next big superhero.
At the time, Swift fans briefly convinced themselves that the singer had a connection to Avengers: Endgame. Why? Her single “ME!” was scheduled to drop on the same day as the Marvel movie, and Swift already had a song called “End Game.” In true fangirl fashion, the timing was enough to send the internet into full detective mode because we know Swift does not play around when it comes to an Easter egg. In the Swifties’ defense, her website had a countdown clock leading up to April 26, the highly anticipated release date of the Endgame movie.
However, the singer later confirmed that she had nothing to do with the movie, and even joked that fans thought she was going to defeat Thanos in an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But if you had told me in 2019 that Taylor Swift and Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame would somehow share an Encore moment in 2026, I don’t know if I would have believed you. But then again, Swift has a way of fitting every puzzle piece together like a giant mystery novel.
Fast forward to today, and the word “Encore” is suddenly putting these two worlds in the same conversation again. Swift is releasing The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on Sept. 25. The album includes four new songs: “Patient Zero,” “Pink Clouding,” “Cleveland!” and “Babylon.” On the exact same date, Marvel is bringing Avengers: Endgame back to theaters as Avengers: Endgame Encore. The Avengers Encore will the movie back to fans with four additional minutes of footage, making the movie three hours and five minutes long. It almost sounds too perfect to believe, and fans truly cannot take it.
At the time, some Swifties were upset that Marvel fans were blaming Swift in taking some of the press away from the new movie. At the time, a fan tweeted, “Since y’all wanna be assh*les for Taylor, Iron Man dies in Endgame. And I’m not even joking.” The viral moment lives on, as fans are bringing the original tweet back, with some brand new jokes of their own.
So could this be another Easter egg? With Swift, we never really know. In her recent pre-recorded appearance at the Emmy’s, Swift recorded a sketch with Mariska Hargitay where she teased fans about all of the elaborate ways they seem to tie everything back to an Easter egg. Since the 2019 incident was an over-the-top conspiracy, there’s a possibility she was playing at the way fans examine everything she does as a clue.
I’d also like to believe it’s a bit of an homage to the release of “ME!” But with four new songs, a mysterious clue, and Marvel adding new footage to its own Endgame return, the Sept. 25 double release is giving fans plenty to talk about.