I got past the connection error after deleting .expo file:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force .expo

then I also landed into another issue: "Failed to construct transformer: Error: Failed to start watch mode." this was fixed after installing watchman using chocolatey on PowerShell admin mode:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

 choco install watchman

the watchman error might be unique to me, so skip if need be.

then I started the Metro server with:

npx expo start --clear

using tunnel or LAN commands did not work for me.

I also feel restarting the IDE/PC hepled in some way :-)