For Swifties, a new Taylor Swift song is rarely just a new song. It’s more of an invitation to revisit old interviews, scan the lyrics for familiar details, and ask who might have been in the room — or at least in her life — when she wrote it.
“Patient Zero,” released Friday, Sept. 25, has given fans a fresh case. The song imagines a woman hearing from someone who is now dating her ex, and one theory keeps coming up: Could Swift be singing about Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas?
As Mashable covered earlier this week, fans were decoding clues before they even knew what Swift was announcing. She swapped the O’s in her Instagram bio for zeroes, put a countdown on her website, and gave everyone another reason to scrutinize her Emmys appearance. On Sept. 22, she revealed “Patient Zero.” A day later, she announced that it was one of four new songs on The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, an expanded version of her 2025 album.
That announcement got a mixed reaction from fans: Some were thrilled to get more music, while others weren’t eager for an encore of an album they hadn’t loved the first time around. The three other new songs are “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding,” and “Babylon.” Swift said she wrote them during a trip to Sweden with Max Martin and Shellback, her collaborators on The Life of a Showgirl, 1989, and Reputation.
Now that the song is out, Swift has explained the conversation that gave her the idea for it. In comments shared with Capital FM, she said:
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“I was hanging out with a bunch of friends, and one of my friends told us that she had been reached out to by the new girlfriend of an ex of hers, asking for guidance on if she had had the same experiences with this guy that this new girlfriend was having.”
But Swifties have looked deeper, as they do, and some think they know which ex — and which woman — might be behind the song.
Why fans think it’s about Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas
The song begins with Swift’s narrator answering a call, saying “I’ve been expecting your call.” She continues, singing,
“If you wanna party with somebody who might know, About the devil on his shoulder under his halo, When the toxins take their hold, you’d rather die than let it go, But if you’re sick of him, I got you, I was patient zero.”
For some fans, Swift’s history with Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas makes them an obvious possibility. Swift briefly dated Jonas in 2008 and later said their breakup inspired “Forever & Always.” Fans also widely linked her Fearless vault track “Mr. Perfectly Fine” to Jonas when it came out in 2021. Turner, who was married to him at the time, shared that song on Instagram with the review: “It’s not NOT a bop.”
Then, in 2023, after Jonas filed for divorce from Turner, Swift and Turner were spotted having dinner together. Turner later told British Vogue that she’d reached out to Swift while looking for a place to stay in New York, and Swift offered her one of her homes for free. Turner called Swift “an absolute hero” during that period.
You can see why fans connected those dots. In the r/TaylorSwift discussion thread, one listener wrote, “I’m firmly in the camp that this is Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas inspired.” Another said, “Sophie and Joe?!?,” but added that it could also be a fictional story informed by several of Swift’s experiences.
Other fans aren’t convinced there’s one couple to identify. “I think it has references to more than one of her exes,” one commenter wrote, reading the song more generally as an offer of support to someone dealing with a difficult relationship.
Of course, the theory remains unconfirmed. Swift said the song began with a friend hearing from an ex’s new girlfriend. The publicly known Swift–Turner story is different, since Turner reached out to Swift for help after her marriage ended. Maybe their history found its way into the song anyway, but for now, the rest of us are basically in that group of friends, comparing notes and trying to figure out who the call was about.
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Music
Taylor Swift
