The encores occupy this really weird space narratively where they can't possibly be canon (v1 and gabriel are both dying in 9-2, not really any way around that) but, just from the two that we have, they're definitely telling a story. Both of them start out with a dead version of their layer that gets "reactivated", creating something that highlights all of the original layer's faults.
I think that that's the statement the levels are trying to make. Gabriel, Sisyphus, and Mirage's arcs were all about accepting mortality. The encores are saying "but what if you didn't accept it?" and then it shows how that goes horribly wrong. In 1-E, there's a speaker that plays "ENOUGH IS NEVER ENOUGH IS NEVER" over and over again in morse code. The encores are basically "this is what would happen if V1 rejected fate and tried to start over".
