I'm far from an expert in astrobiology and I have forgotten some useful terms,but I haven't seen anyone else talking about the fact that a large part of why oxygen is useful to us is its high electronegativity. Essentially, this means that it attracts electrons.

In aerobic respiration, Oxygen is the final electron acceptor, this means it is the particle that ends up with an extra electron after all the energy producing reactions are done. Without having an element with a high electronegativity, there are, essentially, fewer energy yielding reactions that can be performed on a given substance. Thus, life doesn't need Oxygen, but there aren't all that many options for elements with a higher electronegativity.

​

From my quick research it seems that only fluorine has a higher electronegativity than Oxygen, but it is also the 24th most abundant element in the universe, compared to #3 for oxygen. This is a huge difference, oxygen makes up about 1% of the matter in the universe, whereas fluorine makes up around (4 × 10^−5)%. Fluorine is also more reactive than oxygen which makes it more dangerous, thus, any lineage utilizing it as the final electron acceptor would have to evolve a metabolism capable of using it safely, and the energy benefits would have to outweigh the costs of potentially running out of environmental fluorine.

​

Of course, some planets are relatively rich in Fluorine, on earth, for example, fluorine is the 13th most abundant element rather than the 24th, so perhaps there are planets where the abundance of fluorine negates the issue of scarcity. So it seems possible, and there is another comment here saying that the conceptual possibility of hydrogen-respiring lifeforms is agreed upon by many scientists( and I remember discussing an extremophile bacteria or archaea that uses sulfur as their final electron acceptor in one of my undergraduate courses). But it seems that complex life probably requires high metabolic efficiency, and for that you need an element with high electronegativity. And it just so happens oxygen is the second most electronegative element and the 3rd most abundant element. So, if the assumption that an element with high electronegativity is needed in relatively large amounts for complex life to form, we would expect the vast majority of complex life in the universe to use oxygen, even if there are other technical possibilities.