I just realized that the reason there was a seat left on my recent flight to LAX, is that it is a Boeing MAX-9, row 26.
If you have read the NTSB Preliminary Report you will recognize this as the “door plug row” that caused a lot of excitement in January.
As an automotive engineer that works on safety relevant systems every day, I have pretty high confidence that lighting won’t strike twice, but I am still keeping my seatbelt on the whole flight.