Disney+ Ends Simple Super Bowl Commercial With A Taylor Swift Tease

Disney+ just dropped a Super Bowl spot — and it included a major tease for Taylor Swift fans.

At the end of an ad for their content library — including lines from the "Star Wars" franchise, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pixar, and more — the streamer's commercial ended by asking the viewer, "are you ready for it?" Any Swiftie worth their salt is familiar with this lyric. Specifically, it's from Swift's track "...Ready for It?" which opens the artist's sixth studio album "reputation."

This is an understandable tease on Disney+'s part considering that "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" — Swift's record-smashing international tour, which just wrapped up a run in Tokyo as of this writing — will start streaming on Disney+ on March 15. With that said, it's also slightly cruel ... because Swift, as fans know, is currently in the final stretch of re-recording her "stolen" albums (her first six albums' worth of masters were sold by Scott "Scooter" Braun to Scott Borchetta, and she's been remaking them since that happened). "reputation," along with Swift's first album "Taylor Swift," still hasn't been re-released and given a "Taylor's Version," and fans have been waiting anxiously for her revamped version of "reputation." Throwing a "...Ready For It?" lyric into the mix feels particularly manipulative — but again, the streamer certainly wants to promote the fact that it's the exclusive home of the Eras Tour concert film by any means necessary.

On February 9, culture reporter Matthew Belloni reported in his Puck newsletter that Disney CEO Bob Iger made an executive decision and offered up a considerable sum to exclusively claim Taylor Swift's concert film for his streamer. As Belloni said, other Disney execs were trying to outbid Netflix when Iger decisively put $75 million on the table, which the Swift camp readily accepted. 

Not only will "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" find its exclusive home on Disney+, but it'll include new content fans have been waiting for since the movie's initial theatrical release on October 13, 2023. Due to time constraints — Swift's life Eras Tour spans three and a half hours, during which the singer-songwriter is only offstage for brief periods of time — a few  numbers were cut from the theatrical run. Those numbers included "The Archer" from "Lover," "Long Live" from "Speak Now" (which was added a few months after the Eras Tour kicked off after Swift re-released "Speak Now" in July of last year), "cardigan" from "folklore," and "Wildest Dreams" from 1989. When she announced the concert film on Instagram, Swift revealed that all four cut songs would appear in the Disney+ streaming album — as well as four more acoustic songs (in each concert, Swift plays one song on guitar and one on piano, choosing ones that aren't included in the setlist).

It makes sense that Disney+ would include a Swift lyric in their ad — but considering how long fans have waited for "reputation (Taylor's Version)," choosing one from "...Ready For It?" feels like a cruel joke. In any case, the film will be available on Disney+ in mid-March.