This year, the political conventions pulled off an amazing feat: They rebooted a familiar figure, someone who spent years in the public eye going through chameleon-like shifts, and who emerged from the quadrennial partisan ritual reintroduced and reinvigorated.

I’m referring, of course, to Stephen Colbert.

When “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” began on CBS in September 2015, it came with enormous expectations and risks. Mr. Colbert was following in David Letterman’s footsteps as well as his own, having created a satirical performance piece for the ages on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” His move to a big-network late night show might have been a reinvention of the form; it might have been a bust.

Instead, for most of the year, it just … was. There was the occasional newsworthy interview, like his emotional September talk with Vice President Joe Biden, grieving the recent loss of his son. There were a few experiments, like letting the director Spike Jonze shoot a cold-open video in which Mr. Colbert shared an existential moment with Grover from “Sesame Street.”

Night by night, “Late Show” was fine but inessential. Even as a flabbergasting election unfolded, you were less likely to think, “What is Stephen Colbert going to say about this?” than “I wonder what Stephen Colbert would have said about this.”