Reserved word "items" in table query?

Have wasted hours trying to figure this one out and randomly fixed it.
Makes absolutely no sense to me

Naming the server connect id=“items” and table bind.repeat=“items.data.query.data”. No rows populate under the table. In dev tools I can see that the data is coming through fine.
I recreated the database, server connect and entire page but still the same problem

<dmx-serverconnect id="items" url="/api/v1/items/get_all" dmx-param:active="query.active || true" dmx-param:archived="query.archived || false" dmx-param:sort="query.sort" dmx-param:dir="query.dir" dmx-param:offset="query.offset"
  dmx-param:limit="query.limit"></dmx-serverconnect>

<tbody is="dmx-repeat" dmx-generator="bs5table" dmx-bind:repeat="items.data.query.data" id="tableRepeat">

By chance I renamed the serverconnect id and table bind to something else, but left the serverconnect url the same. Now it works ??