[magic_merkin]

Thanks! Appreciate your time and effort. No luck still on my end, it just won't sort by last played. Other skins and addons (marcels widget addon and LAZYTV addon)
work fine when run with my setup (android Leia 18.1, v2.9.0 of MQ8, MYSQLdb). I've tried two other skins today, their next episode widgets function fine. It's a small thing for sure, just something we use daily. Happy wife happy life! I'll try future MQ8 updates and see if my system just starts working. Anyways my experience and setup is listed here if it's ever needed for troubleshooting by anyone else.

All the best with a great skin! 

Try one thing, I don't  use Android, and can't try this .
Remove sorting of widget and see if this will work for you.
IncludesWidgets.xml  (row 284)

Code:

                <content sortby="$INFO[Container(9000).ListItem.Property(sort)]" sortorder="$INFO[Container(9000).ListItem.Property(order)]" target="$VAR[widgets_target]">$VAR[widgets_content]</content>

to have deff. sorting of all widget

Code:

                <content target="$VAR[widgets_target]">$VAR[widgets_content]</content>

Bingo! That made it function correct. Was line 313 in my file if it matters.

Weird! Obviously now i have no sorting but i don't sort differently to default on the 2 widgets i use. So i can function as is whilst the root issue gets looked into.

Appreciate your time. Happy to test as needed.