Nearly every conflict in Young Justice (2010) is instigated by The Light, the shadowy cabal of supervillains who manipulate events out of a desire to evolve humanity and bring it to conquer the stars. Other conflicts in the series also tie back to Darkseid and the forces of Apokolips, who forge a Big Bad Duumvirate with the Light until they can bring down every intergalactic power, then wage war against each other to control the cosmos.
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- In season 1, the Light is shown pulling the strings behind various criminal activities, with the immortal supervillain Vandal Savage acting as their leader, and the other operatives being Ra's al Ghul, Lex Luthor, Queen Bee, Ocean Master, the Brain, and Klarion the Witch Boy.
- Vandal Savage, as the immortal master of the Light, desires to make Earth the dominant superpower in the cosmos, orchestrating various conflicts throughout the season to gather resources for a plan to put the Justice League under mind control through the Starro-tech.
- Ra's al Ghul is the head of the League of Shadows, an ancient sect of assassins, making him the one behind their attempts to acquire the Fog technology and the troubles in Rhelasia. He is also the master of Cheshire, Artemis' older sister, who along with their father Sportsmaster (the Light's enforcer who tries to manipulate Artemis) provides personal conflict to her as she tries to shed her villainous lineage as a hero.
- Lex Luthor is the head of Cadmus and therefore the one who created Superboy (who also has his human DNA) and the Genomorphs, and attempts to manipulate him using the power boosting Shields. He also is partnered with Ra's al Ghul in having engineered the conflict in Rhelasia to gain power, and is behind the cloning of Red Arrow from the original Roy Harper and therefore his role as a Manchurian Agent who puts the Starro-tech in the Justice League.
- Queen Bee is the dictator of Bialya, and the master of the telepathic Psimon. Her activities in Bialya included testing a Boom Tube which brings Sphere to join the Team, and attempting to manipulate the president of Qurac. Attempting to blackmail Miss Martian for humiliating her publicly, she is also one of the personal threats Miss Martian must face as she struggles with her true identity as an A'ashenn (White Martian).
- Ocean Master may be the least focused on of the bunch, but as Aquaman's evil brother, is The Mole for the Light's operations in Atlantis. His manipulations involve sending Black Manta to retrieve or destroy Starro, and in the tie-in comics, leading the Purists to purge all impure Atlanteans.
- The Brain is behind the incident with mutating animals with Kobra Venom (a chemical created from Blockbuster's formula and Bane's venom by the cultist Kobra), among them Superboy's Wolf, and later plays a part in creating the Starro-tech from Starro's arm. In the tie-in comics, his experiments are also the catalyst behind Gorilla City, and putting Ultra-Humanite in one of the gorillas there.
- Klarion the Witch Boy is a Lord of Chaos who murders Kent Nelson, the original Doctor Fate, in order to try to claim his helmet. He later orchestrates the splitting of children and adults into two separate worlds so that Sportsmaster and Riddler can steal the Starro arm, and helps Brain forge it into the various pieces of Starro-tech. He is also a personal threat to Zatanna when her father wound up trapped as Doctor Fate as a result of his earlier world-splitting plan.
- In Season 2, the Light (who have lost Ocean Master in a Time Skip, his place on the Light now filled by Black Manta) shares the role of Big Bad with their mysterious "partner", later revealed to be the Reach.
- Vandal Savage's earlier mind control plan was also used to send a portion of the Justice League into space for a mind-controlled rampage which alerts other alien factions to Earth. Causing those same Justice League members to be put on trial in space, his partnership with the Reach is used to eliminate other intergalactic threats such as Despero and Mongul, using the latter's Warworld to cement the start of Earth's intergalactic empire, partnered with the sinister ruler of Apokolips, Darkseid.
- Ra's al Ghul is the master of the Light's new enforcer, Deathstroke, who worked with Sportsmaster to try to steal the Scarab from Ted Kord, and then went on to steal the key to the Warworld from the Reach.
- Lex Luthor promotes the Reach drinks as part of the Light's partnership with them, but his role in capturing the original Roy, now named Arsenal, is given focus as he tries to pursue him. Later deploying the Runaways to liberate the Team from the Warworld as a cover for the acquisition of its key, he becomes the Secretary-General of the United Nations in the aftermath of the Reach's defeat.
- Queen Bee, now the master behind the supervillain team known as Onslaught, retains her role as a personal enemy of Miss Martian now that she had her idol Marie Logan (Beast Boy's mother) murdered, and leads her forces in a mission in Bialya involving trafficking teenagers to the Reach.
- Black Manta, the biological father of Aqualad, commands the undercover Aqualad and Artemis (now Tigress) as they secretly carry out a Reverse Mole plan (with the former faking a Face–Heel Turn, the latter Faking the Dead), and is therefore the one behind the capture of Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, and Impulse for the Reach.
- The Brain and Klarion have less focus, but play bit parts during the Summit where the Team exposes the Light's manipulation of the Reach, in which Manta and the Brain are captured, Ra's is defeated, and Klarion is summoned to help Vandal escape capture.
- The Reach are the alien beings who created the scarab that Ted Kord owned, and now bonded with current Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes, as well as the ones mainly testing the metagenes in the teenagers they have trafficked. They were slated to take over Earth in the future, making them the reason Impulse came back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, and consist of the Ambassador, the Scientist, and the Warrior aka Black Beetle. After their partnership falls through with the Light, Black Beetle takes control and activates the chrysalises all over Earth as the final threat the Team must form an Enemy Mine with the Light to defeat.
- The partnership between the Light and Apokolips continues in season 3, with the Light now filling their ranks to replace Ra's, Brain, and Black Manta with Deathstroke, Ultra-Humanite, and Granny Goodness.
- Vandal Savage now orchestrates the activation and subsequent trafficking of various metahuman teenagers into space to be used as soldiers in his empire and the empire of Darkseid. Having originally formed his alliance with him thousands of years in the past of human history, they have worked together to ensure all other forces fall before they have one last battle for control of the galaxy. However, Granny's betrayal forces his hand and leads him to forge an Enemy Mine with the Team to free Halo from her.
- Deathstroke now commands the League of Shadows in the place of Ra's, commanding various metahuman assassins sent to serve him. He is also the master behind Terra's infiltration of the Team, making a complication in Geo-Force's desire to save her, and leading to her own conflict of redemption into a genuine hero.
- Lex Luthor uses his powers as Secretary-General to impose sanctions so the Justice League cannot interfere with the Light's trafficking operations. This forces Batman to create the Anti-Light operation and coordinate it by taking Justice League and Team members into a splinter faction, as well as Nightwing forming a splinter operation of his own as another part of the Anti-Light. When Beast Boy later forms the Outsiders, Lex uses his public image to wage a PR war with them and forms his own counterpart team in Infinity Inc. Bedlam's coup in Markovia is an attempt to create an excuse for Lex to pass a Super Registration Act.
- Queen Bee gets less focus in the narrative, but her conflict with Beast Boy is still an underlying aspect of his fractured mind, and Bialya is ultimately where Terra is installed for the Team's rescue of her and her subsequent infiltration.
- Granny Goodness is an agent of Darkseid sent to join the Light, becoming a Villain with Good Publicity similarly to Lex under the guise of Gretchen Goode. Using her corporation of Goode World Studios as a front to traffic metahuman teens, Beast Boy working for her studio as he discovers what her technology does is the central cause behind him forming the Outsiders. All the trafficked metahumans go to her Orphanage in space, making her the reason why the Justice League's strongest are now in space trying to retrieve them. When she later discovers Halo's role in containing the Anti-Life Equation, she moves to capture them for Darkseid against Vandal's wishes, making her the penultimate threat of the season as Vandal forms an Enemy Mine with the Team to expose her to them.
- Ultra-Humanite, a former member of the Injustice League used as a front to throw the heroes off the Light's tail in season 1, is the mentor of Helga Jace, who uses her romance with Black Lightning to infiltrate Nightwing's team. He is therefore behind her actions as part of Baron Bedlam's trafficking ring, her activation of Geo-Force and Terra, and her euthanizing of Gabrielle Daou, the human host of the Motherbox that becomes Halo, and out of a desire to keep them from taking her "children", she and Humanite agree to take Halo to Granny for her plans to acquire the Anti-Life Equation.
- Klarion's role is small, but he runs Project Rutabaga, another trafficking ring in Cuba involving the infusion of metahumans into a monster, serving as another threat for the Outsiders and Zatanna to confront and as the reason why Delphis comes to Atlantis as a result of no longer surviving on land.
- Baron Bedlam is a Disc-One Final Boss who runs the Bedlam trafficking ring alongside former Injustice League leader and ex-count of Vlatava Count Vertigo, and the Evil Uncle of Geo-Force and Terra, who he activated as metahumans. As the initial threat to Nightwing's team and the reason they recruit Geo-Force and Halo, his actions are why Geo-Force was exiled and Terra was taken in by Deathstroke. He is also the Final Boss when he tries to overthrow Gregor as king of Markovia, leading to Terra's Heel–Face Turn and Geo-Force's Face–Heel Turn via killing him. This makes Geo-Force a Puppet King of Markovia under Ambassador Zviad Baazovi, who takes Granny's seat in the Light following her betrayal and is a psychic who can nudge peoples' worst impulses to the surface.
- Season 4's approach to writing story arcs around various season 1 heroes dealing with their own conflicts results in a myriad of Arc Villains, many of whom are allied with the Light or Darkseid.
- Arc 1: A murder mystery occurs when Superboy and Miss Martian arrive on Mars and learn of the murder of King S'turnn J'axx, whose killer S'yraa S'mitt had only murdered him accidentally. The stirred up racial tensions are also exacerbated by Ma'alefa'ak, Miss Martian's evil brother and a Well-Intentioned Extremist who seeks to better society for the White Martians at the expense of the other races, and whom had previously caused stirred racial tensions on New Genesis that culminated in Forager's exile and admission into Nightwing's team. The inciting event of the season comes when a gene bomb he planted, gifted originally from Apokolips, is interfered with by Lor-Zod, and destroyed at the cost of Superboy's life, though in reality he wound up in the Phantom Zone thanks to Phantom Girl's last minute rescue (which subsequently stranded her with him in a coma).
- Arc 2: Lady Shiva, the Light's new enforcer following Deathstroke's promotion, corrals the League of Shadows to try to recapture two traitorous members who've gone to Tigress for help, Vandal's daughter Cassandra and inexperienced assassin Onyx, and threatens a Prisoner Exchange by capturing her daughter Orphan, forcing Tigress to work with Cheshire to save Orphan. The entire scheme is actually an attempt to steal Justice League intel, with Cassandra being a Fake Defector feigning injuries to access the intel and Onyx being an Unwitting Pawn, and Shiva having captured Orphan on the side and lied about letting her go, her previous deployment of Orphan was why Batgirl had been paralyzed and become Oracle.
- Arc 3: Child, an independent villain and new Lord of Chaos who is called to Earth because Klarion's interests have become too aligned with Vandal's goals of Order, as well as in direct response to Zatanna's decision to use the Sentinels of Magic as a means to rotate the hosts of Doctor Fate to free her father Zatara. Her chaotic attacks across the entire planet force Phantom Stranger and Vandal to forge an Enemy Mine, and Klarion, revealed to have forged his alliance with Vandal several thousand years prior to his alliance with Darkseid, to forge one with Zatanna.
- Arc 4: Ocean Master, seemingly returned to life (unbeknowst to the heroes, Shiva had killed him in the prior season), returns to Atlantis to cause strife as a prophecy for high king takes hold around the same time as Child's rampage, coming into conflict with Kaldur'ahm's own return there and the seeming return of Vandal's heroic grandson Arion. Vandal and Humanite used Operation Thrinos to create the current Ocean Master clone as a decoy while the real Ocean Master's mind is inserted into Arion's clone body, with the intention of exploiting the prophecy so this Arion would rule the entire underseas for Vandal.
- Arc 5: Lor-Zod's actions are explored to show him as the overall Big Bad in service to Darkseid. A fugitive from the future and the son of General Dru-Zod, he went to the past, destroying a satellite and a zeta tube that both connected Mars and Earth so Superboy couldn't call for help, and altered Ma'alefa'ak's bomb so the ensuing explosion was intended to assassinate Superboy and erase the Legion of Super-Heroes from the timeline out of revenge for them re-imprisoning his father, leading to a Bad Future ruled by General Zod. The surviving three heroes from the Legion, Saturn Girl, Chameleon Boy, and Phantom Girl had gone back to stop him, and the ensuing grief from Miss Martian, Tigress, and Beast Boy can also be traced back to him. Joined by Ma'alefa'ak as his main partner and Mantis, Forager's former master on New Genesis, his overall goals are to release his family from the Phantom Zone several years early to ensure their takeover, while Rocket is on Justice League business there.
- Arc 6: General Zod finally escapes the Phantom Zone when Lor-Zod, who kidnaps the Legion of Super-Heroes, intercepts the heroes on Trombus as they open it up. Having indoctrinated the stranded Superboy into joining him and turning him against the Team when Nightwing leads a rescue mission, and joined by Lor-Zod, Ma'alefa'ak, and Ursa (who becomes the new Emerald Empress), he becomes the Final Boss of the season as he moves to conquer Earth and force the brainwashed Superboy to make the ultimate choice. To show that the threat the Light poses has not been forgotten in spite of the various arc villains, once the heroes do finally defeat General Zod, Vandal Savage then imprisons him and the other Phantom Zone Kryptonians on the Warworld as potential assets.
Comic Book
- The Targets comic miniseries sees Count Vertigo escape prison with the help of an army of drones who capture his good niece Perdita. Various members of the Light are aiding him in his plan, with Zviad Baazovi, who continues manipulating Geo-Force and is the new overseer of Infinity Inc, having Everyman impersonate her to fake a rescue, the drones actually being the technology of Lex Luthor, and Queen Bee having Onslaught (who have recently recruited Superboy's Evil Twin Match) battle with the Outsiders when they search in Bialya before then arriving herself to seemingly take control of several members of the Team. It is then revealed that the Light was after a piece of kryptonite found in Vlatava, which Perdita had attempted to bring to the Justice League before her capture, and which Lex Luthor inserted into his new creation, Metallo. Vertigo aimed to use the incident to reinstate his political power in Vlatava, and he and Queen Bee personally confront the Team when they try to save Perdita.
