This is another thing that feeds into the Fermi paradox. Previous generations of stars and planets might be too low metallicity to give rise to very complex intelligent life. We might be part of the first crop to evolve as the metallicity of the cosmos reaches a threshold.

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.