I think you’re misunderstanding the Android bootloader model. All the Android phones I saw when researching one to buy came with locked bootloaders, even the easily-unlocked Google Pixel series. So it’s not even a question whether the bootloader will arrive unlocked. What differentiates models is whether “there’s a way to unlock it” – plenty of models don’t support any such way. (I didn’t consider some classes of Android phones in my research of which to buy, so this could be a faulty generalization.)

The parent comments weren’t specific about whether this phone’s bootloader can be unlocked, but when they talk about this phone’s locked bootloader, I think unlockability is the issue they are really talking about.