There’s a Taylor Swift Song in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ (Sort Of)
While people might not exactly associate Taylor Swift with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it turns out one of her songs inspired a hilarious gag in Thor: Love and Thunder. Director Taika Waititi recently opened up about the inspiration behind the scene-stealing screaming goats featured in the film — and their connection to Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift’s surprising connection to ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’
Outside of Waititi, Swift already had a surprising connection to Thor: Love and Thunder — years before it was even announced.
Back in 2019, Swift revealed Netflix rom-com Someone Great inspired the Lover track “Death by a Thousand Cuts,” according to Billboard. Funnily enough, Someone Great writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson said the film wouldn’t have happened without Taylor Swift’s album 1989.
“I’ve been listening to Taylor’s music since her very first album. As she grew, I grew. Ebbing and flowing through life; a musical North Star in her catalog,” Robinson wrote on Instagram. “In the fall of 2014 when I was a certifiable basket case wandering around LA in pajamas heartbroken over the boy I’d left behind in New York, 1989 was there like a best friend with a bottle of tequila and a bear hug. I found the most comfort in “Clean,” a song about rebirth after love lost. It inspired me and Someone Great.”
Swift later talked about the experience. “I just wrote a song based on something she made, which she made while listening to something I made, which is the most meta thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said on Elvis Duran’s morning radio show (via Billboard).
Flash-forward to today, and Robinson is credited as a co-writer for Thor: Love and Thunder alongside Waititi. Robinson gushed over the experience in a sweet tribute Instagram post in 2021, writing, “best adventure of my life.”
The Taylor Swift meme that inspired the screaming goats in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’
Waititi hinted he might be a Swiftie after including a nod to a Swift song in Thor: Love and Thunder.
The 2012 Taylor Swift song “I Knew You Were Trouble” inspired a YouTube meme of the music video with spliced-in footage of a screaming goat. The goat’s screams were dubbed over snippets of the original song whenever Swift would sing “ah” in the chorus.
Years later, someone on Thor: Love and Thunder found a genius way to connect this to the film’s screaming goats.
“They were never meant to be screaming,” Waititi told Insider of the goats. “The goats were always going to be in there because they are in the comics, but we didn’t know how they would sound.”
He continued, “Then someone in post-production found this meme of a Taylor Swift song that has screaming goats in it. I didn’t even know that existed.”
The gag feels similar to the director’s shake weight joke in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok. It also employed an internet sensation years after it went viral.
The singer was dating Tom Hiddleston while he filmed ‘Thor: Ragnarok’
Outside of Swift’s unexpected connections to Thor: Love and Thunder, the “All Too Well” singer actually dated one of the franchise’s biggest stars: Tom Hiddleston.
It’s hard to forget the “Hiddleswift” phenomenon that swept the internet in 2016. Swift and Hiddleston were romantically linked following the singer’s split from DJ Calvin Harris in May of that same year.
Hiddleston is of course known for playing Loki in the MCU, the estranged brother of Thor. He made his franchise debut in 2011’s Thor and served as the main antagonist in the first Avengers movie. Hiddleston also reprised the role for Thor: Ragnarok — which started filming right around the time he and Swift were confirmed to be dating.
But much to the despair of many, the couple called it quits on their whirlwind romance in September 2016. Thor: Ragnarok premiered November 2017.
