With spring-projects/spring-framework#29644 the WebClient doesn't need external dependencies anymore. If no netty / jetty / Apache HttpClient is found, it falls back to the JdkClientHttpConnector which is baked into the JDK.
At least in org.springframework.boot.test.web.reactive.server.WebTestClientContextCustomizerFactory we check for the presence of netty / jetty / apache httpclient. This check can be removed, and maybe such checks are somewhere else in the codebase.