Taylor Swift debuts ‘Patient Zero’ music video with dark twist

Taylor Swift has unveiled the music video for her new song Patient Zero, one of the tracks that is part of her extended album The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore.

The video, premiered at the MTV Music Video Awards Sunday after Swift accepted the inaugural Artist Director Honor.

It depicts 50 Shades of Grey actor Dakota Johnson as the latest woman scorned by a seemingly perfect man, played by The Penguin star Colin Farrell.

In the video, it emerges that Swift’s character is the man’s ex, who’s come back as a ghost to warn Johnson’s character that he is actually dangerous.

Throughout the video, Johnson and Swift wear the same outfits and live parallel lives, and the singer watches close by while Johnson struggles in the relationship. The video cuts to flashbacks of Swift being harmed by Farrell’s character, and him adding poison to her drink.

The music video ends with Johnson looking at a grave that’s revealed to belong to Swift’s character. The actor leaves a rose atop the gravestone for the woman.

Patient Zero tells the story of a woman reflecting on her relationship with a toxic ex, and Swift is the patient zero in the scenario.

The broad term patient zero typically refers to the first individual identified with a disease or an illness in a new outbreak.

In the song, Swift describes a man who “burst into your life like fireworks” before revealing his true colors describing the man with “the devil on his shoulder under his halo” and that he used her for social climbing.

Taylor Swift then addresses Dakota Johnson’s character, singing, “It’s not for me to tell someone else what to do / But if you’re sick of him / I got you / I was patient zero.”