Okay I found a solution for this here: "Keep variable references inside the query in sync with your app" query option questions
The issue was...i was using a temp state variable to store the multiselect values and it seems that you can't do that reliably without first having a few things in place...which can be found in the linked post. Mind blown that this isn't in the docs though...especially the part about enabling the advanced feature and how unorderly success handlers are when handling multiple executions.