The early star were huge and exploded extremely fast, like a few million years. It's likely they did this in rapid succession many times priming the universe with a lot of building blocks. The early universe was wildly energetic.
Life on Earth is mostly C, H, O, and N, but it makes use of many heavier elements to conduct complex chemical synthesis processes. Some are only used in trace amounts but are still necessary. Then there’s technology which could not have developed to this level without most of the periodic table. Low metallicity is likely to put a ceiling on what can evolve.
You’re not getting spacefaring aliens until you have the building blocks. Then it takes billions of years, and on top of that stable nurseries like Earth are probably rare.
So TL;DR my guess is that we are early and rare.
In a few billion years the galaxy might resemble Star Wars with aliens all over the place, albeit without FTL unless we are very wrong about core physics or there’s some huge aspect of reality we haven’t found yet.
Seems highly unlikely that the resolution to the Fermi paradox is just that we’re the first intelligent species in the galaxy.
Those 4 steps are: (1) Formation of life (2) Formation of multicellular life (3) Formation of "runaway intelligence", where a species evolves enough intelligence to manipulate their environment in ways that supercede evolution. Parrots and dolphins, for instance, are both quite smart, but don't look close to getting a runaway benefit from that which would allow them to invent technology like agriculture and overpower all other species. (4) Technical civilization manages to manipulate their planet or spread beyond one star system in a way that would be detectable from elsewhere in the galaxy. (Hasn't happened yet.)