I think his experience in the Sarlaac changed him. His seems more philosophical about life, which I guess a near death experience combined with time alone can do, I just hope they show this in BoB so it all connects better and feels authentic.
I have had a couple of brushes with death. First was a cancer diagnosis back around 1997, when I was newly married and
really happy for the first time in my life (I mean, since the age of about nine or so, when finding reasons to be happy seemed a lot easier). It was totally unexpected; I went into the hospital for appendicitis, which it turned out had been caused by lymphoma.
Several years later, I was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver; for that brief moment when I realized I was not going to be able to avoid the crash, I was sure I was either about to die or at least be very seriously hurt. Instead, I walked away -- or rather, limped away. I was closer to serious trouble than I realized; one of my injuries was a lacerated spleen that I didn't know about until about a week later. Thankfully, the internal bleeding stopped on its own. Took about three days to get all the bits of glass out of my hair. The drunk driver died after he got to the hospital, leaving behind a wife and two children. He was so drunk at dusk on a Saturday afternoon he was driving on the wrong side of the road; I just happened to encounter him at the top of a steep hill and I couldn't even see him until I was less then seconds away from the collision. Because it was dusk, his headlights blinded me to the point I couldn't see whether I would be better off going completely off the road to my right -- I knew there was a drop in that direction but couldn't tell what else might be there -- plus, as stated, I had almost no time to consider any options. I cut the wheel to the right and got as far over as I could and stood on the brake, but my car at that time didn't have ABS. I was probably at something like 35 or 40 mph when we collided, but I have no idea how fast he was moving. He was in a late'90s Toyota Avalon and I had a somewhat newer Nissan Sentra. I clearly remember the airbag expanding in front of me, and that I somehow had sufficient strength that I never hit said airbag. I came away with a lacerated spleen, a bruised heart, at least one broken rib and a broken left foot.
You can bet that these things certainly did affect my general attitude toward life.
SSB