If the life form is carbon based and the progressive planet geology is similar to earth, then you probably would be correct in saying than life would expand beyond the relatively simple single cell later in the geological history of the planet. Other life form bases require other conditions and may come to dominance earlier.
The available evidence seems to indicate that abiogenesis occurred once, mitochondria occurred once, and chloroplasts occurred once.
We also know that if there is another evolutionary pathway to complex life it didn’t occur here on Earth. We only see the one. What we observe in evolutionary biology astounds me, much the same as the observations that led to quantum theory.