Taylor Swift Just Revealed How the Betty-James Love Triangle Ends

Taylor Swift is spilling all the secrets behind Folklore, the surprise eighth studio album she dropped during the middle of the pandemic in July. 

Her new special, Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions, just started streaming on Disney+, and in it she reveals her cowriter William Bowery (on “Betty” and “Exile”) is, indeed, her boyfriend Joe Alwyn. She also gives more info on the song “Betty," letting us in on what she thinks actually happened between Betty and James. (For the uninitiated, click here to learn more about this fictional love triangle, which plays out over several songs on Folklore.)

This reveal happens in the film as Swift is discussing the song “August," which she says came about because she “had written down in my phone, ‘meet me behind the mall’ years ago and wanted to write it into a song.” 

“So I've been kind of in my head calling the girl from ‘August’ either Augusta or Augustine. I've just been naming her that in my head," Swift explains in the film. “What happened in my head is that ‘Cardigan’ is Betty's perspective from like 20 to 30 years later looking back on this love that was this tumultuous thing. In my head, I think Betty and James ended up together, right? In my head, she ends up with him, but he really put her through it.”

She continues, “But ‘August’ was obviously about the girl that James had this summer with, right? So she seems like she's a bad girl, but really she's not a bad girl. She's like really a sensitive person who fell for him and she was trying to seem cool and seem like she didn't care because that's what girls have to do. And she was trying to let him think that she didn't care, but she really did and she thought they had something very real. And then he goes back to Betty. So the idea that there's some bad villain girl in any type of situation that, like, takes your man is really a total myth because that's not usually the case at all. Everybody has feelings and wants to be seen and loved—and just, like, Augustine, that's all she really wanted too.” 

Her. Mind. 

This also further proves the fan theory that much of Folklore is telling one narrative story throughout the album. 

Taylor Swift's Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions is currently streaming on Disney+.

Originally Appeared on Glamour