It's only a few more days until DC Universe's long anticipated Young Justice: Outsiders releases on Friday, January 4. The new season will bring with it a ton of DC characters, both new and old, but here are the key players and rising stars you'll want to be sure to keep track of throughout the season.

The Veterans

Nightwing

Voice Actor: Jesse McCartney

One of the original members of the Team, Dick Grayson graduated from Robin to Nightwing in the years between the first two seasons. As the new leader following Aqualad's leave, Dick led an expanded team through the Reach invasion and the Light's grander machinations. At the end of Season 2, Dick took a leave of absence due to the guilt he felt over the death of his best friend, Wally West, though in the two years since, he's apparently been leading a small black ops team to uncover a metahuman trafficking ring.

Tigress

Voice Actor: Stephanie Lemelin

Artemis Crock didn't have the best of starts when she first joined the team; the crew initially believed her to be a forced-upon-them replacement for fellow archer Red Arrow, and she spent much of her initial weeks trying to prevent her new friends from discovering her family included assassins Sportsmaster and Cheshire. Artemis and Wally eventually became a couple and retired from the hero game, though she later got back in to become a double agent, seemingly working for the Light as Tigress while maintaining her Young Justice loyalties. After Wally's death, she returned to hero work once again as Tigress, and is now a part of Nightwing's black ops team.

Black Lightning

Voice Actor: Khary Payton

Jefferson Pierce showed up infrequently during the first two seasons of Young Justice, typically as a background player whenever the Justice League showed up. Notably, though, during the Reach invasion, he offered to train a young Virgil Hawkins shortly before the teen took on his superhero moniker of Static. Despite his standing in the League, he's also joined with Nightwing's team after a battle with what he thought was an alien monster turned out to be a human who had been forcibly experimented on.

Aquaman

Voice Actor: Khary Payton

Kaldur'ahm has had one of the more eventful lives of any of the Team's founding members. Having started out as Aqualad, the Atlantean used the death of Aquagirl as a chance to defect to the side of his father Black Manta as part of a deep cover operation. Following a lobotomy by an in-the-dark Ms. Martian and his subsequent mental repair, he helped bring down his father, the Light, and the Reach invasion. In the two years since, Kaldur has since become the new Aquaman, and with it the new leader of the Justice League.

RELATED: DC Nation Debuts New Young Justice: Outsiders Trailer

The Outsiders

Geo-Force

Voice Actor: Troy Baker

Making his debut to the show's universe with Outsiders, Geo-Force is Brion, the prince of Markovia. In the comics, he's also the half-brother of the Teen Titan Terra. Like his sister, he has the ability to manipulate earth and rocks, though he can also control gravity, shoot lava, and possesses superhuman strength. In the show, he willingly experiments on himself to unlock his metagene and the superpowers that come with it to save his country.

Halo

Voice Actor: Zehra Fazal

Halo is one of the victims of the new metahuman trafficking ring who is later saved by Nightwing and Artemis and eventually becomes part of the Outsiders team. She has the ability to create different auras with functions that are dependent on their color. Red creates heat beams, green generates a stasis beam, and so on.

Forager

Voice Actor: Jason Spisak

Unlike the other Outsiders, Forager hails from New Genesis and is part of a society of humanoid bugs. The show has dealt with Jack Kirby's Fourth World before, but the inclusion of Forager into the larger world of the Justice League indicates that Kirby's characters offbeat will be a larger focus throughout the season. Like all New Gods, he has superhuman strength and reflexes, but he also has the ability to curl up into a ball, similar to Superboy's Sphere.

NEXT PAGE: Young Justice: Outsiders - The Rest of the Main Team... and the Big Villains

Young Justice Outsiders

The Team

Static

Static showed up in Season 2 as a victim of the Reach, and is one of the first to show the results of their metagene testing. After doing his small part to smear the Reach with the help of fellow teen runaways, Virgil and his friends joined up with the Young Justice team during the Reach invasion. After the dust settled, he decided to take Black Lightning up on his offer and seek tutoring for his powers.

Arrowette

Arrowette, aka Cissie King-Jones, was seen very briefly towards the end of the first season, when Artemis and Green Arrow saved her father from being killed by Black Spider. Since then, Cissie has grown up and taken to archery herself. That encounter with the two archers has clearly stuck with her, as her costume is clearly influenced by Artemis' uniform.

Thirteen

The daughter of paranormal investigator Doctor Thirteen, Traci tapped into Metropolis' "urban magic' to unlock her powers. Along with accessing the knowledge of cities she's in, she can fire mystical blasts, track auras and control bodies for a short time. She also has a psychic link with her pet iguana Leroy, and briefly dated Blue Beetle.

Blue Beetle

Voice Actor: Eric Lopez

Jaime Reyes was a big part of how the world was saved and nearly destroyed in Season 2. Now in perfect harmony with his powers-granting Scarab, he's stuck around as a member of the team, but may find himself in greater danger. Apocalyptan tech is "not compatible" with the Scarab, and it may be what does the Blue Beetle in.

Kid Flash 

Voice Actor: James Marsden

It wouldn't be a superhero team without a Flash, and that's where Bart Allen comes in. The time traveling grandson of the Flash showed up in Season 2 to help prevent his dark future at the hands of the Reach from coming to past. Now that he's achieved his goal, he's living in the present where he's ditched his Impulse codename for the Kid Flash mantle that Wally once utilized.

Beast Boy  

Voice Actor: Greg Cipes

Everyone's favorite green-skinned shapeshifter has taken on an interesting new role in Outsiders. Not only is Gar an actor on a hit sci-fi show, he's also an advocate for the anti-metahuman trafficking that's at the heart of the season. In Season 2, Gar was briefly experimented on and tortured by the Reach, so it makes sense that he would want to do something about it. Despite his busy schedule, he's still a superhero when the time allows.

Bring On the Bad Guys

Darkseid Young Justice Outsiders

Vandal Savage & Darkseid

Savage has been the founder of the Light and has been running the overarching schemes from behind scenes since Season 1. At the end of Season 2, he fled Earth with the War World, taking off for Darkseid's home planet of Apokolips.

Darkseid was hinted at in Season 1, and a few of his cronies and technology have shown up throughout the series. He himself showed up in the final moments of Season 2 to give a welcoming handshake to Savage, who promised the pair would continue to conduct "business as usual."

What the two have been up to in the two years since the Reach invasion is anyone's guess, but it wouldn't be surprising if the metahuman arms race wasn't started by them, at ;eat in part. After all, advancing the human race while actually wishing for the end of everything is what they're best at.

Young Justice: Outsiders premieres Jan. 4 on DC Universe.