I still like the idea that simple aromatic rings just vibe and want everything else to vibe, so they arrange other incredibly small things into the proper order that they go on to be omw viruses and later conventional bioloylife.

It wraps up all that and even "biological handidness" because it's a binary option which format any group of rings would prefer.

On a long enough timeline (which the universe runs on very long timelines and isn't that far into this one) life would pop up all over the fucking place. No matter the conditions something that meets our definition of biological life would emerge in that environment.

We only need some kind of panspermia life spreading event if we want to end up like Star Wars, otherwise there's unlikely to be a crowded universe until the very end when mature species have to leave home worlds behind en mass as stars die.