We last checked in with Taylor Swift on Friday, back with Gigi Hadid and several other regular “squad” members. They’d all spent the night at Taylor’s before hanging out in Reading, PA to visit the home  where she grew up. They then attended Taylor’s first show in Philadelphia – Gigi seemed really into it: 

Here are some newer shots of Taylor on Sunday. It’s the second time she’s been papped not wearing that necklace – the one with Joe Alwyn’s initial on it. So that, in combination with the fact that she’s been seen spending time with her friends again, and Joe being at Wimbledon on Saturday (see attached), is leading to some speculation among her fans. Is this a sign of …something? 

“Oh for f-ck’s sake” is the old person reaction to that reaction. After all, they just spent time together in Turks & Caicos. And we saw the pictures. That was, literally, a week ago. What could go wrong? 

The not-old person reaction to that reaction is, well, this is how this generation communicates. They use symbols. They signal each other. And Taylor is an expert on symbols and signals. Her fans would tell you that she’s constantly leaving Easter eggs for them, constantly embedding treasures she knows they’ll find, details about her life she knows they’ll seek out and understand. 

Knowing then how her fans study these details, and being the detail-oriented person that she is, is it even possible that Taylor would forget to wear Joe around her neck? 

Maybe she wasn’t wearing it because it bothers her on stage. Maybe she was wearing it but she’s put it on a longer chain. Maybe this is a lot of angsting over nothing. I’m thinking it’s probably nothing. But I am interested to see what happens this fall. Joe has three films coming out, all of them possible award season contenders: The Favourite, Boy Erased, and Mary Queen of Scots. Aside: I have some punctuation questions about Mary Queen of Scots. There’s no comma between Mary and Queen on the poster or on the Twitter account. The comma should be there. Are we really going without the comma? 

Anyway, the point here about Joe is that he’s soon heading into a round of promotion, his first round of promotion since dating Taylor Swift. What will that look like for him? Is he ready for it? I wish I was on his media team. Because his personal and professional lives are actually intersecting perfectly right now, in The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots in particular – two films with multiple female leads, with men in supporting roles, two films with women in the seats of power, and he 100% would know something about that, right? It’s the easiest pivot. And he’d get major bonus points.