alt Hacker NewsDisclaimer: This is just some cursory research using LLMs.
C was invented to rewrite UNIX in a programming language that made it easy to port UNIX between machines.
So what you're saying is contradictory. You're saying the underlying motivation of C was wrong or unnecessary (porting UNIX to different hardware architectures) but C won because that underlying motivation (easy porting between hardware architectures) was partially right.
Your position is now that C didn't need UNIX as a stopgap, which is weird because your argument gains no weight (basically saying C's dominance is sheer coincidence) if it's true but if it's false you're just plain wrong.
My point is that C's popularity quickly outgrew the popularity of UNIX, especially during most of the 1990s before Linux made UNIX accessible to us "PC peasants". Most 1990s PC games were written in C, and C was also the dominant high level language on 16/32 bitters like the Amiga or Atari ST.