bAnd now, almost 21 months after Taylor Swift launched the highest-grossing tour of all time, you might think, “Wait, it’s Taylor Swift.” Despite it on the Eras Tour?” or that the globe-spanning, headline-dominating, literally seismic show would go on forever.

After all, the Eras era spanned an era, at least in the ever-faster Internet era. But after 152 shows, more than 10 million fans and multiple pop culture takeovers, the Eras Tour reached its conclusion in appropriately rainy Vancouver and became the highest-grossing tour of all time – though total earnings have not yet been released.

Not that you’d know it from downtown, which – like every city before it in the US, Australia, Asia, Europe and finally Canada – turned into a temporary mecca for hundreds of thousands of sequined, cheering Swifties. Much has been said about how the Eras Tour became its own two-year stimulus program, but it’s still breathtaking to witness Swiftonomics in person. According to the unscientific estimate of a U.S. border agent who asked me how Taylor was doing before even looking at my passport, “99.5%” of the vehicles traveling between the U.S. and Canada that weekend were up the way to and from the three trade fairs. (Maybe he saw all the friendship bracelets being exchanged between cars in traffic). Bright lyrics adorned the streets leading to BC Place; You couldn’t go to a Starbucks in town without seeing women in Eras Tour merchandise.

“The energy is just… I think everyone feels it,” said a speechless Maline Davis, 27, of St. Louis, Missouri, at the final show. “This is a unique experience. I just don’t know that this will happen again.”

Probably not, at least not in this way. The Eras Tour – a stunning spectacle of ambition, self-mythology and sheer amazingness that covers between 45 and 50 songs in three and a half hours – was a special alchemy of ridiculously prolific artist, uniquely devout fan base, mass cultural appeal and simmering post-Covid desire to return to big concerts . In doing so, Swift redefined the scope of a music tour: how much money she could make, how much extra-textual lore she could produce and record, how long it could last. I reviewed the first show in March 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, when TikTokers predicted a two-hour show. That night the friend I took with me told me she was pregnant; Your daughter is now a walking, talking toddler.

During that time, Swift inadvertently challenged Ticketmaster/LiveNation’s monopoly, headlined the first billion-dollar tour (total revenues have not yet been disclosed), and turned the show into an industry-changing concert film. The Eras tour was transformative, featuring a new album, a new boyfriend, and new re-releases in Swift’s ongoing quest to regain control of her back catalog (and ever-increasing attention). She became both the mainstream and social media protagonist of 2023, faltering through overexposure and ending up on the astral plane of an unknown, generally unfathomable mega-celebrity. The Eras Tour “just took over everything. “It was all anyone could talk about,” said Davis’ sister Addie, 24. “I just can’t believe this is the last weekend.”

Throughout the run, obtaining tickets was an extremely strenuous struggle and for many the final dates were less sentimental than practical. “We didn’t even know it was going to be the last weekend,” said Hayley, 19, who traveled with her family from Dayton, Ohio, after they couldn’t get tickets to the regional show in Cincinnati. Danielle Barnard was scheduled to attend a show in London in June with her 13-year-old daughter Emerson, but was unable to fly from Seattle after Emerson, who has a heart condition, suffered cardiac arrest. “I’m just happy to have her here,” she said. “We’re here to celebrate.” Cora, 31, from Vancouver, made it to her first show a year after “winning the Great War” at Ticketmaster. “I would never say I’m a 10/10 (Swiftie) because I wouldn’t sell a limb,” she said of her dedication, “but have I spent a lot of money and am I going to cry?” Yes.”

Everyone had undoubtedly already seen the show, whether through the concert film or through the millions of recordings hacked, lavished and dissected online. Outside the stadiums, these recordings became a kind of post-reality TV – the Eras Tour as an ever-changing, interactive, increasingly meta show that produced new lore every week that incorporated Swift back into the tour. Beginning with this summer’s European leg, the modified setlist includes “The Tortured Poets Department,” the record-breaking album she released in April that chronicles, in typical diary-like fashion, the artist’s personal turmoil during the glittering, seemingly triumphant early era of the Eras Tour revealed. It’s surreal to see Swift sing “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a dazzling ode to her functional depression during the first few shows, as she told fans watching that she was having the time of her life the whole time Time.

If anything, the dissonance heightened the awe. In its second year, the Eras Tour evolved into a semi-religious event. Fans ritualized the show with Rocky Horror-style timed participation—when to shout unofficial extra lyrics, when to hold up the flashlight on your phone (and, for the track “Willow,” a small balloon over the flashlight). When should you give an eardrum-shaking, minute-long ovation so Swift can enjoy the adoration she’s built, earbuds out?

“I decided to make this tour the longest tour I’ve ever done because you made it feel like much more than just a concert tour,” she said on stage Friday night. And in every way – audience size, profits, setlist, content creation, fan devotion – it was. I saw a Swiftie friend delete photos on his phone to make room to record the entire show. Several people called their loved ones via FaceTime. Others screamed every word in a familiar yet incredible flurry of ecstatic noises. “I didn’t record much this time because I just wanted to take it in,” Maline Davis said. I did the same with my childhood best friend and felt dazed – by the mind-numbing screams, by the confusing passage of time, by the unimaginable magnitude of it all, by the end of an era.