Long story short, after waiting 30 minutes and some unsuccessful attempts to hard reset and enter the UEFI settings to revive my screen, I decided to check cables - nothing helped.
Then, during the constant whining, cursing, and sobbing, I realized I got the second display connected - my TV via the HDMI (love debugging on 55" screen😜). After unplugging this HDMI, I saw the updates were still in progress, at this time, on my default screen. The TV was turned off all the time, however, the operating system somehow changed my default screen selection. I'm pretty sure my PC didn't like all the manual enforced RESETs during the update procedure... 🤦♂️
Lesson learned: If you think your OS is dead or corrupted and you consider reinstalling the system, it's a good idea to check all your connected (even turned off) monitors...
Originally published at dev.to.