Disregard that. It’s always after I make a forum question I figure things out.
I had the Metahuman mesh hierarchy underneath another mesh hierarchy and that was what caused the weirdness.
I was able to figure that out because I had the original retargeted metahuman bluepritn in project, and it was working fine, so that told me then that nothing is wrong with the skeleton/animBP, but rather the way it has been integrated into my other characterBP.