The Importance of Impressions

This is an impression that is based on what is likely to happen. So for example, glancing over these reports, it looks like sales are trending upward. Or it looks like everyone dressed up for the conference. I'm physically seeing everyone being dressed up. That's very straightforward. But just as a note, we also use this idiomatically, just to mean, and this is how we used it at the top of the episode when you responded and said, looks like we're going up to the mountains.