In the DCAU, when does Supergirls 3 years on the farm occur?

[ShadowSJG]

In one ep, she mentioned she was on a farm for 3 years. So I was curious, what does this mean? The wiki for the ep little girl lost says Clark found her 3 years ago and she was on the farm until then but other says it refers to her appearance before initiaiton in jlu. Does little girl lost mention 3 years in the ep or not?

 

[Yojimbo]

Well, implicitly being stuck on the farm for three years is open to interpretation.

In terms of the JLU, it could mean Clark was against her becoming a fully fledged public superhero until JLU's "Initiation" or right before.

Or you could argue she went public after the events of STAS' "Little Girl Lost" or after the events of "Unity", "Girls' Nite Out", or "Legacy". I don't remember the exact context but because of Little Girl Lost, I think Luthor knew about Supergirl by Legacy. Of lesser importance, if Bullock recognizes who Supergirl was or not in Girls' Nite Out is kinda moot since you could argue Bullock doesn't keep up on superheroes or could care less.

 

[TheDorkKnight]

Little Lost Girls did not mention it as the episode cuts from Superman finding her to Kara being on the farm. I always took it to mean that Kara was on the farm three years until her first public Supergirl appearance in "Little Lost Girl".

 

[Yojimbo]

Little Lost Girls did not mention it as the episode cuts from Superman finding her to Kara being on the farm. I always took it to mean that Kara was on the farm three years until her first public Supergirl appearance in "Little Lost Girl".

Yup. I think I interpreted it as Superman does some soul searching after Dan Turpin's death at the end of "Apokolips Now" and decides to explore space for the remnants of Krypton and discovers the Argos colony and Kara, a little hope that he was looking for replenishes his spirit, then a 3 year time skip to the "Little Girl Lost" 2 parter. Then after that Kara pretty much starts to do a little super heroics here and there, nothing full time, skirmishes like we see in "Unity" and "Girls' Nite Out" but by "Initiation" a few years later, she's a full time superhero.

 

[iammattie]

While bits of it have been knocked out of canon, the writers of Little Girl Lost (Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer) wrote a tie-in comic (Superman Adventures #21) that suggests she was only with the Kent's a short matter of time before "Little Girl Lost"

We see Ma Kent say that she's been with them for "weeks" and makes reference to spring cleaning. The next couple pages lead up to prom (A spring dance) and show Kara still getting used to Earth life, so it seems to be pretty clear that this all happens around the same time, and not over the course of years. This is also backed up by the comic going on to show her first winter on Earth and how she's coping with the PTSD of having been one of the last survivors of Argo as it went into an ice age as well as having been cryogenically frozen

Once again, there are parts of this comic that were later retconned due to the DCAU expanding to add JL and JLU, but being that these were the writers on the episode, I'd imagine that they were privy to conversations with the producers about crafting Kara's backstory for the episode and story points from that which were extrapolated on in this comic. Part of that backstory included Kara being 12 when Krypton blew up

And her having survived with her family for 4 years before the freezing process (which, to be fair is a bit different from the episode which actually says it was 5 years. Unless you wanna rationalize that maybe her mom didn't freeze herself for another year?)

This of course, making her frozen at 16, which we know to be her canonical age during Superman: The Animated Series from her official bio on the shows now-defunct website.

So, once again, it seems pretty clear that not a lot of time was intended to have passed between her arrival to Earth and coming to Metropolis as Supergirl. It's also worth noting that in Little Girl Lost itself, during Kara's arrival in Metropolis makes multiple references to the scene prior in Smallville as if not much time has passed at all "you told me not to Vroom, so I ran" as a response to Clark having told her not to fly at the farm, Lois specifically saying they have a NEW Intergang directly after Clark brings them up at the dinner table, etc. Also the scene in Smallville mentions that it's Spring, which keeping writer intent in mind, lines up with when Evan and Sarah said she came to live with the Kent Family. So, if we assume that the 3 years on the farm is a reference to a time gap set during LGL then we've got to take it as 3 years missing between Superman being on Argo and the scene on the farm, and for some unexplained reason, there was no title card denoting passage of time (as seen in episodes like Critters or Mxyzpixlated), and Kara's character model showed 0 signs of aging between being in the cryo-unit and the scene on the farm (not to mention that her model in the cryo-unit is clearly older than other DCAU characters that we know were 13, like Tim Drake)

The other option, would be that she was kept on the farm for three years before joining the League in "Initiation". Which makes all the sense in the world to me since we learn in Unity (which is the following Spring at the very least) that she's still on the farm regardless of having gone on a Supergirl Adventure or two.

I think this can also be backed up because of her age. We've already confirmed through multiple sources that she was 16 during Little Girl Lost, and we know she turns 21 during "Far From Home". A few episodes earlier, in "To Another Shore" Wonder Woman mentions J'onn being cooped up in the Watchtower for "almost two years" as a result of him staying in for monitor duty since "Initiation" rather than joining the league on missions. This means Kara would have been 19 years old when she joined the league, 3 years after the events of "Little Girl Lost", which as I've already said, we know she was still on the farm during this time.

On top of that, Matt Wayne, who wrote "Chaos at the Earth's Core" had this to say about it all.

So, overall, it seems like the facts point to it being a reference to the amount of time between LGL and Initiation. Especially when you take into consideration that Kara reiterates the line as "Three years. On a farm. In Kansas. " and like I pointed out, Unity is at least a year after LGL and she's still living on the farm, and now that I think about it, she's still living on the farm up to JL's "Comfort and Joy" as well. You'd think that if there were a time gap between Clark finding her and her coming to Metropolis that the way she reiterates the line would have indicated that she spent even more than three years living on the farm.


But I digress, it's all cartoons and probably doesn't warrant the amount of time spent overthinking any of it. If you've got a different interpretation then have fun with it!

 

[Dallas Kinard]

Yup. I think I interpreted it as Superman does some soul searching after Dan Turpin's death at the end of "Apokolips Now" and decides to explore space for the remnants of Krypton and discovers the Argos colony and Kara, a little hope that he was looking for replenishes his spirit, then a 3 year time skip to the "Little Girl Lost" 2 parter. Then after that Kara pretty much starts to do a little super heroics here and there, nothing full time, skirmishes like we see in "Unity" and "Girls' Nite Out" but by "Initiation" a few years later, she's a full time superhero.

I agree. It think if you just watch the on-screen material, it's pretty clear that she was on the farm for three years before she officially became Supergirl.

 

[ShadowSJG]

I agree. It think if you just watch the on-screen material, it's pretty clear that she was on the farm for three years before she officially became Supergirl.

Yup. I think I interpreted it as Superman does some soul searching after Dan Turpin's death at the end of "Apokolips Now" and decides to explore space for the remnants of Krypton and discovers the Argos colony and Kara, a little hope that he was looking for replenishes his spirit, then a 3 year time skip to the "Little Girl Lost" 2 parter. Then after that Kara pretty much starts to do a little super heroics here and there, nothing full time, skirmishes like we see in "Unity" and "Girls' Nite Out" but by "Initiation" a few years later, she's a full time superhero.

Eh, I don't think so as one answer mentioned. She turns 21 in JLU and it makes sense she's 19 at the start of the show
Also in JLU, she mentioned Superman went rogue "a few years back" which supports it more, so I think on screen material supports 3 years by initiation.

 

[Dallas Kinard]

Eh, I don't think so as one answer mentioned. She turns 21 in JLU and it makes sense she's 19 at the start of the show
Also in JLU, she mentioned Superman went rogue "a few years back" which supports it more, so I think on screen material supports 3 years by initiation.

The question becomes, how old is she when she comes out of Cryo? It's never stated on-screen.