You may not need systemd on WSL
Most popular Linux distributions use systemd as the init system. It is like a Swiss-army knife that controls startup, shutdown, service monitoring, and so much more.
In late 2022 Microsoft announced systemd support in WSL.
Prior to that point, however, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) danced to its own initialization tune, and distros running on WSL did not use systemd, and did not generally employ a traditional init system.
This taught folks like me something: I don’t always need to have systemd or other init system for a good Linux experience. Running WSL without systemd is OK.