Apple watch crash on read or receive messages

A week ago, my Apple watch 5 (OS 9.4) started crashing whenever I open a text message or receive one.

Steps to repro: 100% every time.

1. Receive message on iPhone and immediately go to check it on watch.
2. See spinning wait cursor while watch recovers, ends at main watch face
3. Click to view messages and see message preview in list
4. Click to exoand/view message
5. Message appears for 1/4 second then app crashes back to main watch face.

What I've tried to resolve:

1. iphone and watch are running latest software updates (iOS 16.5 (20F5039e)

1. Quit messaging apps and restarted both devices
2. Unpaired apple watch and re-paired it from the backup it creates when you do so.

The only thing I haven't don't is completely factory reset it up as a new watch. I really do not want to do this as setting up the watch the way I like it is very time consuming.

Any ideas?