React Native app crashes when calling Rive Ref Methods

Description

When calling the ref functions (.play(), .reset(), etc.), it causes a crash. The crash consistently happened whether I was calling these functions from inside a useEffect, a handler function, or wherever else in the React lifecycle. It seems like there's something funky with the ref happening where the underlying Swift code is trying to do an operation on a null object or something.

The specific error is:
Thread 1: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0x0)

and it gets thrown by this line:

https://github.com/rive-app/rive-react-native/blob/f6432c82384aab7b4e397f819f12ff51c0c4540b/ios/RiveReactNativeView.swift#L132

Provide a Repro

Here's a code snippet that was consistently crashing the app when switching between dark and light mode in the iOS Simulator:

  const isDarkMode = useColorScheme() === 'dark'
  const animationRef = useRef<RiveRef>(null)

  useEffect(() => {
    animationRef.current?.play("Intro", LoopMode.Loop)
  }, [isDarkMode])

  return (
    <Rive
      ref={animationRef}
      alignment={Alignment.TopCenter}
      animationName="Intro"
      artboardName="Unified"
      fit={Fit.FitHeight}
      resourceName={isDarkMode ? 'OnboardingDark' : 'OnboardingLight'}
      stateMachineName="State Machine 1"
      style={animationStyles}
    />
  )

it would also crash consistently when I would navigate away from the app and back again multiple times in a row.

I tried some combination of:

• cleanup function in useEffect to .stop() or .reset() the animation
• .stop() or .reset() the animation each time the useEffect runs
• calling .stop() or .reset() when the screen has focus

and eventually settled on just unmounting the component when this screen lost focus and remounting it when it gained focus again.

Source .riv/.rev file

Unfortunately I can't share the .riv file as it's from a private project. But I'm almost certain it's not specific to the Rive file since we've seen the same behavior with many different files.

Expected behavior

Rive would run the ref function(s) I call on it without crashing the app.

Read ios/RiveReactNativeView.swift around line 132 and reproduce with the provided React Native ref snippet, especially during resource changes or navigation remounts. Done means the ref methods no longer produce EXC_BAD_ACCESS in those scenarios; the issue provides no named test or shareable .riv asset, so validation will need an available reproduction.