i feel like the reason why The Extinction as a fear doesn’t really come through quite as effectively in the s5 statements is primarily due to the lack of guilt that having an apocalyptic world forced onto you by a random single event of some freak with too many eyes in an act you could never have forseen generates in comparison to the steadily more apocalyptic world forced upon you by entirely human actions. Like for my girl Leah in mag175 things weren’t actually that awful for her - she had a purpose ((her little catalogue)) and she was coping relatively with the world as it was. This is due to the fact that it wasn’t the fault of humanity - it was the fault of an all-powerful eltrich being - and therefore it just doesnt really represent a major part of The Extinction, the idea that so much of this devastation was done for you. That you as a consumer as indirectly damning a world you don’t truly know, and that every purchase has consequences you’ll never truly know (and don’t want to know) against other people and/or the environment. Like you can have as many massive predator seagulls as you want, but that doesn’t help to encapsulate the fear that The Extinction truly represents and the idea that we as both a collective and as individuals are currently decimating the natural world that has been around for so long. That fucked up umbrella doesn’t do anything to really inspire any dread or fear because there is nothing left for it to truly harm, which i feel is another important reason The Extinction wouldn’t gather as much fear in an already post-apocalyptic world.
The fear from The Extinction is typically borne from helplessness - people are driving animals to extinction for the products you use and there is no way to avoid it and nothing to truly be done. this comes with the knowledge that even if you personally do everything to avoid adding to it, 1: it’s impossible, and 2: it won’t truly do anything as an individual ((absolutely not a radical opinion i know but bear with me here)).
The problem with this however for the writing, is that the apocalypse has already happened. There is no more extinction, there is no more waiting and watching with nothing to do, because things in Leah’s domain (it’s the only ep i relistened to recently so im basing most of this on her episode - don’t hate too hard if im actually just saying/completely contradicting things that happened in canon pls) have already gotten as bad as they’ll ever be. there are no more people for her, and that’s awful obviously but it also presents hope that shouldn’t exist in this Fear domain, because she should then expect things to get better, as the world will recover without people. obviously it won’t actually, as this is a domain away from the world at all, but i feel it’s pretty clear in the episode that she doesn’t actually have the level of understanding of the situation - because why would she?
TLDR: as much as i love The Extinction as a concept, due to the fact the eyepocalypse was completely out of people’s control, generally the s5 statements lack the guilt that i feel is integral to the fear. as well as this, as the only s5 extinction ep i can remember happens in a post-apocalyptic domain, it also lacks the idea of waiting for things to continuously get worse and be helpless to do anything about it.
lmk if im missing anything!! :3