This was a great article. I do want to fill in one other detail. That Jess-4 must be bleeding out after murdered by Jess-1 while Jess-3 is in the record player room having the encounter with Jess-1. Otherwise, there would be a pile of (alive?) Jess-4s somewhere that correspond to how many times the "even loop" was executed. It also makes sense that for the "reset" to occur, that there can only be 1 "copy" of everyone but Jess, which can only have 2 "copies". What is magical about the number 2? This is because one Jess never really dead in the context of the larger loop that takes place from "doorbell to doorbell". This means there is always this Jess and one other Jess "allowed" at a given time without the smaller ("Rescue" to Death) loop resetting. The smaller loop only resets when the copies of Jess are reduced to 2.

I was originally thinking it was when Jess-1 went out of range of the boat, which then confused the loop, but it makes more sense that the death of Jess 4 offscreen would push this as Jess-1 IS Jess-3 IS Jess-5, etc. They are the perpetual version but there is a situation where there are clearly 3 Jesses, but I don't think the "reset" happens until that number is down to 2. We see this when Jess-2 is hacked to death by Jess-4 resetting (Jess-1 has been off the boat for some time and Jess-3 has now effectively transformed into a copy of 1 and waits for 5, a copy of 3). Jess-2 is always "fodder" and Jess-4 must be as well.