Time is a flat circle, and that is certainly true for Brian Stelter this week.

The former CNN host announced Tuesday that he would return to the network and his newsletter “Reliable Sources” — just two months after his successor Oliver Darcy left the network.

Stelter was fired in 2022 during CEO Chris Licht’s ill-fated tenure at the network, as part of a purge of those known for criticizing Donald Trump and other Republicans. Stelter went on to write a book that took aim at Fox News and the 2020 election, and later took a job as Vanity Fair special correspondent.

He announced his return, in the usual way, via a message to the ‘Reliable Sources’ email list.

“The media industry has grown up, CNN has evolved, and I’ve changed a lot since I left two years ago,” Stelter wrote. “I loved my old life as a Sunday morning host, but to borrow some lingo from my video game blogging days, I’ve finished that level of the game. Time for new levels, new challenges.”

It begins on September 9, the day before the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

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“I am thrilled to welcome Brian back to CNN in this new role,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement. “Brian is one of the world’s leading experts in media commentary and, as founder of the Reliable Sources newsletter, he is the perfect choice to lead Reliable Sources into its next chapter.”

The news came less than a month after Darcy, who worked under Stelter for many years before taking over the newsletter’s helm in 2022, opted to leave CNN to launch his subscription-only newsletter Status. The launch came complete with a splash New York Times profile that portrayed him as “CNN’s media columnist” who “goes his own way.” (Darcy did not respond to a request for comment, but Stelter said in his Tuesday email that he believes their two products “would complement each other beautifully.”)

CNN confirmed that it approached the former anchor with the lofty new title of “Chief Media Analyst” shortly after Darcy left, and launched a sprint to pull everything together ahead of the network’s public timetable for a fall relaunch. In his Tuesday email, Stelter promised to “reinvent Reliable Sources digest”, indicating a likely redesign to differentiate it from Darcy’s Reliable Sources-esque offerings.

Stelter was among a group of vocal CNN stars who were ousted after Warner Bros. executive John Malone publicly demanded that the network “develop into real journalism” and refrain from criticizing right-wing figures. Reporter John Harwood was also fired, while Don Lemon was reassigned to a morning show before being fired last year.

However, bringing back Stelter gives the network’s critics a chance to claim that CNN is returning to the era of Republican verbal outbursts. Stelter made plenty of enemies at Fox News: Sean Hannity often referred to him as “Humpty Dumpty,” while Greg Gutfeld often tried to make him the butt of jokes. When Stelter was fired, Trump suggested that he should “REST IN PEACE!”

But the fact that CNN has rehired its star reporter indicates that such pressure means less to the company than it did during the Age of Light, especially as the company undergoes its own reinvention.

The network plans to offer its first digital subscription product by the end of the year, and Stelter’s revamped Reliable Sources—an established brand with a well-known figure at the helm — could be part of such an offering.