"Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor's Version)" Debuts On Handmaid's Tale
It's finally Rep (TV) time!
Turns out, the old Taylor can come to the phone right now. As rumors have grown that Taylor Swift is preparing to re-release her 2017 album Reputation, the pop star revisited her darkest era by dropping her new version of its lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do.” The song was surprise-released on May 20, when it played in its entirety for the first time during the penultimate episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.
In the tense Handmaid’s Tale scene that the song scores (which you can watch here), June leads her fellow handmaids in their climactic rebellion against the Commanders of Gilead, ominously walking through the streets as explosions set off. The event takes place at the beginning of the show’s second-to-last episode, queueing up the grand finale with a perfect use of Swift’s most brutal revenge track.
The show’s star and executive producer Elisabeth Moss told Billboard that the whole team has been awaiting the right moment to finally use a Swift song in their soundtrack.
“I’ve been wanting to use a Taylor song for many years on the show, and we finally found the perfect spot for a track from her, and I’m so glad we waited because there could not be a more perfect song for a more perfect moment,” Moss said. “Taylor has been such an inspiration to me personally. As a Swiftie myself, and I think I can speak for [co-star] Yvonne [Strahovski] and our entire cast as well, who are all Swifties, it’s such an honor to be able to use her music in the final episodes of our show.”
While this marks the first time the full version of “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” has been unveiled, fans have actually heard snippets of it before. The newly recorded track first debuted in a trailor for the Prime Video series Wilderness in 2023, and then was used again in a trailer for a New England Patriots docuseries half a year later.
However, this drop seems to fuel the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) gossip much more substantially, especially given that fans believe Swift has been teasing a big announcement at the American Music Awards, which happens to be taking place just six days after that Handmaid’s Tale song release.
