WARNING: The following contains spoilers for WandaVision Episode 5, "On a Very Special Episode...," now streaming on Disney+.
In WandaVision Episode 5, the MCU Avengers witnessed the silent horror of watching their children lose years of their lives in the blink of an eye. However Wanda and Vision aren't the first super-couple to go through a parent's worst nightmare, Lois and Clark have lived through it, and recently too.
In 2019's Superman #6, by Brian Michael Bendis, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Oclair Albert and Josh Reed, Superman's son, Jonathan Kent, aged from adolescence into his late teens faster than a speeding bullet. Several issues earlier, Jon and Lois Lane had left for space with Superman's birth father, Jor-El, hoping to teach Jon more about the universe beyond Earth. Lois left the Jon and Jor-El shortly after the trip began, returning to Metropolis and her husband, and Jon returned three weeks he left. The only problem was that for Jon, it had been seven years.
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Superman's first reaction to this shocking revelation was to list off every crazy explanation for Jon's aging other than the inevitable. From kryptonite variants to possible clones, Superman didn't want to accept what was right in front of him. He initially doesn't even take Jon's explanation literally -- he has to be told, definitively, that years have passed rather than weeks. Lois doesn't want to believe it either, asking again if this growth spurt was the result of one of the many forms of kryptonite, like her husband did. In the end, she accepts that this is her son and that he has been gone for seven years. Tears stream down her face as she laments missing so much of his life, as she begins asking about how this specifically happened.
Over the course of four issues, the creative team explains the full story of Jon Kent's lost years. Jon tells his parents all of the details of the time he lost, sparring no horrible or traumatic details. After Lois left Jon and Jor-El, Jon reveals Jor-El's instability, showing him explain his fears about his own purpose in the universe to a 10-year-old Jonathan. When their ship is sucked into a black hole, however, Jor-El no longer seems so bad, not compared to the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3. Lois and Clark can only stand and listen as they hear Jon tell them about how Ultraman imprisoned him in a volcano. Jon spent years trapped in Ultraman's prison before being rescued by Jor-El and returning to his own Earth.
Compared to the rapid aging seen in WandaVision, Lois and Clark finding out that their son has at least got to live the years they lost as parents is a sort of comfort. However, finding out how those years were spent may very well be worse. Through the Legion of Superheroes, and the Future State event, DC has leaned into the idea of an older Jon Kent to show his growth into a more mature and responsible hero.
However, DC has also continued to shine a light on untold tales of Jonathan Kent's younger years, in particular his role in Super Sons, which has led to revisiting this version of the character through various limited series.
With DC's main Jonathan Kent still firmly in his teenage years, Jon's adolescent adventures with Damian Wayne are ultimately exercises in nostalgia for the recent past, before Superboy settled into his current status quo.
Instead, the DC Universe marches on with Jon Kent's journey towards becoming every bit the hero his father is, maybe even more. Even though Lois and Clark missed several formative years of Jon's life, he's still on the heroic path that they had already set him on. While
Billy and Tommy's future as Speed and Wiccan after WandaVision still seems uncertain, Jonathan Kent is the example who proves that their story could still have a happy ending.
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