What if life's evolutionary end point is always sentience?

It’s OK. Consciousness is but a brief anomaly in the vast sea of time.

"The material, sensuously perceptible world to which we ourselves belong is the only reality.... Our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain. Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter." — Karl Marx

Speak for yourself. I try not to think.

If by consciousness, you just mean thinking, then sure.

But if you mean awareness — “phenomena”, if you prefer — then I don’t see why an experiential state would (or could) be entirely secondary to a physical state.

It is, after all, possible for me to write words and perform other physical actions based on my experiential state. In many ways, my mental world is more “real” than the physical world.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think rejecting physicalism necessarily requires embracing the idea of a soul. I’m an atheist, and a neutral monist, for example. But if I had to choose between only physicalism and idealism, idealism makes more sense. Before anything else, I’m conscious.

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Action potential doesn't do thinking. Thinking happens at neuron junctions and that shits chemical and analogue. The electrical part just moves the data to the next synapse. There are some gap junctions but those aren't really associated with thinking.