Every secret message and hidden detail you missed in Taylor Swift’s new video

Last night, I was in bed wearing my Taylor Swift pajamas and scrolling through the Taylor Swift app I illegally downloaded from New Zealand while listening to my Taylor Swift Spotify playlist and waited for Taylor Swift’s new video to drop.

I walk you through this “Say crack again. Crack” scenario to set the scene and give me credibility for all the insane conspiracy theories and details I’m about to explain. I’m not some random media binch out here for clicks — I’m a pathetically invested Swiftologist well versed in the Taylor Swift arts.

Last night, the Great White Snake herself released a video for her second single, ….Ready For It? To be perfectly honest, I hated it. The video had nothing to do with the snippy, sweet song (which I actually love) and instead took us through some weird Cyborg-Ex Machina-Femmebot-Ghost-In-The-Shell-But-With-Even-More-White-People-Bad-Blood-Mad-Love clusterfuck. That said, though, the video was filled with easter eggs that satisfied me as someone with a psychiatric need to comb through her lyrics like they’re the fucking Dead Sea Scrolls. Let’s begin:

Her secret message to Joe

This was very obvious, and very cute. Her infamous birth year, 1989, is spray painted on the wall behind her next to boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s birth year, 1991. I still firmly and vehemently believe …Ready For It? is about Harry Styles (and you can read my full analysis here), but the video is full of little love nuggets (ew) for her newest beau.

Obviously there’s a prominent 13 right away

For the woefully uninitiated: Taylor Swift’s lucky number is 13 and she hides it everywhere. She was born on December 13, turned 13 on Friday the 13th, her first album went platinum in 13 weeks, three singles peaked at 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, she’s frequently in seat #13 or M (that’s the 13th letter of the alphabet) by accident at awards shows and ends up winning, etc. She’s into it.

She’s hinting at her upcoming singles

We see lots of seemingly random phrases spray painted on the walls in the video:

Gorgeous is her latest single, so it makes sense that in context, those other phrases are all also upcoming song titles. The full album comes out Nov. 10 and we’ll know for sure.

We’ve got some snake references!

See the gold Chinese characters on the green sign? Yeah, that says Year Of The Snake! Not only was Taylor’s birth year (1989, remember?) the Year of the Snake, but it’s also a little warning: This is gonna be her year, don’t fuck with her. Joesph Kahn, her video’s director and an occasional piece of shit (he’s racist and once dissed Beyoncé), said there would be lots of Chinese clues throughout the video. Including….

This Chinese message to Joe!

Or at least a Joe. It could be Joe Alwyn, it could be Joesph Kahn. Maybe it’s about Joe Jonas! Just kidding. Here’s his name in Chinese:

See?

She dissed Calvin pretty hard

OK so see all this lightning? It’s a direct callback to the album art for ex Calvin Harris’ song This Is What You Came For, which Taylor wrote. So the drama is this: Calvin released the song, written by him and an unknown Swedish writer named Nils Sjöberg. There was speculation that Taylor sang on a bit of the track (you can really hear it in the “yoooo-ooous” of the chorus) but that was it. Taylor hyped the song a lot and captioned pictures with the lyrics, but we all just thought she was being a supportive girlfriend. Here’s her wearing a custom jacket with the album art on the back:

Then, after they broke up, Taylor claimed credit for the song — she was Nils Sjöberg! Calvin flipped out and they got into a Twitter spat. People were mad at her about it, weirdly. She’s referenced Nils once before, on this tombstone from the Look What You Made Me Do video:

And normally I wouldn’t immediately connect the lightning in …Ready For It? to This Is What You Came For, but director Joesph Kahn tweeted this last night:

So here’s the deal with the naked robot

Taylor liked these theories on Tumblr so it’s safe to assume they’re correct. She’s naked because we take and take from her — her body and autonomy has been stripped from her by fans, media, and other artists. Kanye used her naked body without her permission in the form of a wax figure for his Famous video. She’s trapped in the box we’ve put her in, unable to break out.

We think the Hooded Taylor is the real one for the whole video.

But she’s not! She’s the robot, the persona the media thinks she is — manipulative, evil, controlling.

We see her on a white horse, which means a few things

We’ve seen a white horse from Taylor twice before, once literally and once metaphorically. Of course, she has a song called White Horse from her second album, Fearless, in which she fully rejects the idea of needing a man to save her.

Then, she rides one in another Kahn-directed video, Blank Space:

This means two things: first, the Old Taylor who wrote those songs did it from a very real place. After Look What You Made Me Do, a lot of fans worried and speculated that what she’d done in the past was all persona. Because Real Taylor (Naked Taylor) is on the horse instead of Evil Hooded Taylor, she’s telling us that those songs were honest and true.

Secondly, she’s mounted on the white horse meaning she’s the knight coming to save herself. And that’s exactly what she does in the final scenes of the video.

She’s crucified by the media

She strikes a Christlike pose here, with the words THEY’RE BURNING ALL THE WITCHES scrawled underneath it. Sounds like two things to me: upcoming song lyrics, and a feminist message. The media and malevolent men will always try to silence and crucify women, but we can break free.

She’s done the Jesus Christ Superstar thing once before in her Look What You Made Me Do video:

But the Real Taylor is finally free

Real Naked Taylor finally breaks free from the box when she hits a high note — literally, she uses her voice and the box shatters to free her. The only word she says in the box is “JAILOR!” yelled to Evil Taylor. Then, she hits a note and is released:

It was only when Real Taylor dared to speak that she could destroy Evil Taylor, revealing that she was the fake one all along. Here’s her cyborg destruction:

Real Taylor, now free, heads for the light to reenter the real world:

And finally, she’s happy. She sings the final part of the chorus, the last “Are you ready for it?” and it’s a direct challenge to everyone: the media, her fans, her critics. Are they ready for the real Taylor? Are you ready for it?