What if, and this is spit balling at its finest, the guy who came out was reporting correctly, that the displays did go dark. And the reason for all this is ...
He fell asleep and he could no longer see the displays while his finger was jammed into the seat switch and he woke up when the plane went nuts from him being pushed into the wheel. And ... the other pilot was also rudely awakened from their own nap.
(Now let's see how long this entirely unfounded speculation takes to make it to a news service.)