Ahh, I read that wrong initially.
After messing with the actual data, it did simply show as an array when I pulled it out which was fine. I am probably going to avoid doing many WP_Query lookups anyway at this point because it's just easier for me to do a wpdb->get than trying to navigate WordPress' WP_Query formula.
Perhaps I'll watch some WP_Query videos later on to fully understand how that works. I'm sure WP has built-in caching with that (unless I'm wrong?) but it was a nightmare trying to figure it all out.
Between the serialized data and the issue I had here (https://support.metabox.io/topic/getting-all-data-from-relationship/) it was just quicker to do a LEFT JOIN and pull the fields I needed 🙂 I know that's not the 'WP proper' way to do it, but definitely easier.
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