As @gaston (I don't know how to @mention people here) pointed out and as I half suspected there were versioning issues as with all the other instances we see of this issues on SO. what I did to resolve it was

1. Spark 3.4 works with Java 8/11/17. I in my daze followed some odd documentation, but in the end for this item I - Added Java 17 from Settings -> Project Settings -> Project -> SDK -> azul-17. Then udpated my source/target for the maven plugin to 17's. Then from the Maven Project view Reloaded the project

So now the project will compile with all the latest available for Spark 3.4
However that brings me to my next blocker..... (barf)

2024-10-30 17:14:14,980 ERROR ApplicationMaster [Driver]: User class threw exception: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: scala/collection/ArrayOps$

I'll be investigating this now, and perhaps another SO post..