Okay, all you armchair photographers...

What has been learned here?

Reference images lacking Kodak girls always wind up in this kind of debate. Macbeth charts are primarily intended for densitometry, not for eyeballing comparisons such as this thread's.

We need more girls, multiple ethnicities. Yes!

Scanner differences: some scanners adjust for exposure using software alone, others adjust intensity. My old Epson 3200 depends on software, my Nikon V adjusts intensity. The Nikon's much better than the Epson with decent negs, but it fails entirely with extremely dense negatives: Epson actually does better with extreme density, just as would an optical enlarger

Epson scanners mostly come with Silverfast SE. Silverfast SE has a much bigger range of film emulsion curves (most of which are long-forgotten products, but which can still be useful).

It'd be mildly interesting to play Silverfast SE against Epson scan with ultra-dense negs.

However...neither rivals Vuescan...