I see no reason to doubt.

I think at the scale of the universe life even thinking capabilities life is almost certainly inevitable.

What's not inevitable is that it can thrive, and survive to a galactic scale. That's not even yet certain for us.

Universe is too big, we're all too far apart. Civilizations come, civilizations go. Some may not be on a planet where even rocket travel may be possible - no source of energy dense enough. Some can get wiped out by disasters. Asteroids. It's happened on this planet a bunch of times.

It's like the Birthday paradox. It's likely 2 people have the same birthday. It's not likely that someone else has YOUR birthday.