Why does blueprint start running when opened in editor?

If I simply open a Blueprint in the editor I can see it is executing from some logging I am doing.

This is a problem because the references are not setup yet so UE4 crashes (I comment out the references so I can see the logging and stop the crashing).

This Blueprint is the child of a C++ Player Controller Class.

Am I missing something simple?

I don’t understand why the blueprint is executing while just sitting in the editor…